


The God Who Saved a City

by semaphore27



Series: The God Who... [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), FrostIron Fandom, Iron Man (Movies), Norse Religion & Lore, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Art School, Avengers Family, Avengers Tower, Awesome Jarvis (Iron Man movies), Awesome Pepper Potts, BAMF Loki (Marvel), Brain Damage, Brian Banner's A+ Parenting, Bruce Banner & Tony Stark Friendship, Bruce Banner Is a Good Bro, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Returns, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Ceiling Vent Clint Barton, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Domestic Avengers, Engineering, Epic Friendship, Evil Odin (Marvel), Female Friendship, Friendship, Good Loki (Marvel), Guilt, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Intersex Jotunn (Marvel), Intersex Loki (Marvel), Jarvis (Iron Man movies) is a Good Bro, Jotunn Loki (Marvel), Loki (Marvel) Feels, Loki (Marvel) Has Issues, Loki (Marvel) Needs a Hug, M/M, Magic, Magic-Users, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Memory Loss, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Minor Jane Foster/Thor, Odin's A+ Parenting, Past Brainwashing, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Phil Coulson Has the Patience of a Saint, Pregnancy, Pregnant Loki, Protective Avengers, Protective Jarvis (Iron Man movies), Protective Kurt, Protective Steve, Protective Thor, Science Bros, Steve Rogers Feels, Thor Feels, Thor Is Not Stupid, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Training, Villains to Heroes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2019-05-01 13:23:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 48,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14521485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semaphore27/pseuds/semaphore27
Summary: Part 3 ofThe God Who...series, sequel to Part 1:The God Who Fell to Earthand Part 2:The God Who Built a World.The Avengers & friends return to Manhattan and expect life to continue as usual. Whether that's even a possibility with a memory-wiped god of mischief in their midst remains to be seen.





	1. Everybody was Hydra-Fighting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Battle Royale in the streets of Berlin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's title is courtesy of my staying up too late to write Loki, and also having Carl Douglas's unforgettable (literally--once it's stuck in your head it stays) 1974 masterpiece " _Kung Fu Fighting_ " earworming its way through my brain.
> 
> The Berserkers (aka berserks) of Icelandic legend were Norse super-soldiers who, it's recorded, fought in a state of entranced rage.
> 
> Bockwurst is pale (yet delicious) German sausage made from ground veal and pork, and seasoned with salt, white pepper, paprika, chives and parsley. Cocktail weenies are tiny (2" long or less) sausages made from the gods only know what, often served at U.S. potlucks in a strange, melted combination of grape jelly and BBQ sauce, from which they are fished with toothpicks and eaten. Again, the gods only know why that is.
> 
> A swathe, in the sense of "cut a swathe" is an agricultural term meaning the width of the cut of a scythe or mowing machine. It's now used more generally to mean a wide path or strip.
> 
> Keening, in general terms, is a high-pitched wail. More specifically, it's a wail of grief for the dead.
> 
> The term "fucking-A" has its origins among U.S. soldiers during WWII. Although no one is sure exactly what the "A" originally stood for, the expression means, basically, "I totally agree."
> 
> The "Clown Car Routine," in which an impossibly large number of clowns emerge from a ludicrously small vehicle, originated with the Cole Bros. Circus in the 1950's. Alternatively, the car may be a portal to hell. You decide.

“Fucking Hydra? _Again?_ ” Tony asked. From above, the seething mass of black-clad figures on the ground closely resembled ants escaping an ant hill, the armored goons rushing everywhere with no rhyme or reason that he could discern.

He did a quick eye-roll behind the cover of his mask. Fucking Hydra.

What was everyone's least-favorite Nazi spinoff even doing here, especially in such force? It kinda seemed like overkill for one Winter Soldier, even one with such a proven talent for bloody mayhem as James Buchanan Barnes, aka "Bucky."

Bucky. What a fucking stupid name.

"I'd rather not," Clint quipped over Tony's earpiece. Everybody ignored him.

“Hydra,” Steve agreed instead, sounding frozen-jawed, tooth-grindingly grim. Cap had hit the ground running, his shield already zinging out and about and back again, his spangle-suit (he'd changed en route, so much for subtlety) creating rare flashes of color in that sea of black-on-black-on-black.

"Keep chill, my friend. Keep chill," Sam Wilson chimed in. Like Tony, he was currently hovering, his big metal wings spread, as he scoped out the situation.

So faceless, the guys down there. So anonymous, in their identical black suits. So full of shit.

Tony didn't just hate them in a general, patriotic, "Yay, America!" kind of way, he hated them personally, for their lies and their perversion of science and their creepy Nazi origins.

He hated them for being in this particular spot, when he just wanted to rescue his guy and haul tail out of there, and for probably knowing exactly where Loki was, when he didn't.

"If you remain calm, sir," J told him--gently rather than snarkily, which was never a good sign, "You will be able to think more clearly."

"Not sure I can do it, J," Tony sub-vocalized, for J.A.R.V.I.S.'s electronic ears only. He didn't want the others to hear, didn't want them to realize how completely freaked-out he was feeling.

Of course, the aforementioned sea of black wasn't completely composed of flunkies of Hydra. It included two of their own number: Clint, who was firing arrows so fast his arms, hand, bow, and individual shafts had gone into a fuzzy gray blur of dark weapons and light skin, and Natasha, kickass as per usual, cutting through the crowd like a handgun-wielding force of nature.

Nat snapped out a single Russian word that was, undoubtedly, not only a swear, but a bad enough one to earn her a "Language!" from Steve--if he'd happened to speak Russian, which Tony knew for a fact he didn't.

Only Steve had let Tony's own recent f-bomb slide without so much as a murmur. Clearly, the poor man was distracted.

 _Just like you_ , Tony thought. _Only you're trying to distract yourself by being an idiot._

Anything to keep his mind off the goon squad below, and how it related to his vulnerable and innocent Loki.

If Loki was even down there. Tony couldn't quite decide which was worse--for Loki to be in the middle of that clear and present danger, or for Loki to be entirely elsewhere, in some completely unknown place, forcing him to begin the nerve- and soul-shredding search all over again.

Tony didn't think he could take that.

Correction. He _knew_ he couldn't.

Loki would be here. He would. Steve had frightened him too badly for Loki to go anywhere else except straight to Bucky Barnes by any means available (the fact that Loki had the wherewithal to remove himself half a world away in barely the space of a heartbeat would never stop being amazing to him).

Also, Bucky had been in possession, and actually used, Loki's credit card, which proved they'd been in contact. Had used it to buy a shit-ton of foods Loki liked, so far as Tony could tell from the store's grainy surveillance footage, which probably meant Loki had hit his new friend with one of his wide-eyed and uber-polite "Feed me, Seymours!" and sent the super-soldier-in-hiding running to the nearest grocery. A hungry Loki could be awfully hard to resist.

And so, enter Avengers. And Hydra.

Natasha's Russian word had clearly been different from the one that had been pronounced, seconds before, by a large guy wearing a shimmery and curiously unstealthy stealthsuit, that looked a lot like it had been sewn together out of the same material used to make movie screens. The big guy--undoubtedly a Hydra bigwig--repeated the word, his voice, this time, amplified in a weird way that made it seem to both hang in the air and niggle its persuasive self around every corner, into every nook and cranny.

Two seconds later, as the word continued to reverberate, Mr. Movie Screen winked out of sight.

At the same time, all Tony’s sensors (give or take), went crazy. As he bobbled in midair, his right repulsor--no longer in his control--blasted away most of the corner off a nearby apartment block before J.A.R.V.I.S. managed to shut it down.

“Jesus! Shit!” Tony snarled, already listing badly to port. "J, what the hell?"

All he got from the A.I. was something that sounded a lot like, "Szzt! Fzzt!" Meanwhile, Steve _still_ appeared too distracted to “Language!” him, and Tony had totally lost track of Clint, Phil, and Nat in his intermittently-working visuals, which were mostly down to crackles and flashes, almost torturous to Tony's optic nerves. Now and then he got a glimpse of blue or red that might be either Cap or Kurt--who the hell knew? Sam Wilson had clearly soared off to somewhere Tony couldn't make out--hopefully he'd only landed to give Steve a hand with the battle below, and not been blitzed out of the sky.

Tony listed a little more, his gyros obviously fucked.

 _Yeah, just what I need--another baddie who’s learned to crap on my tech_ , he thought. It would definitely be temporary. Give him half an hour in the lab and Hydra would see who laughed last!

“Iron Man, you okay?” Bruce’s voice sounded in his ear, whiny and staccato with interference, like an overly-concerned mosquito, but at least marginally audible.

“Fucking Hydra!” Tony spat, struggling to reorient his slightly motion-sick self. He tried again with the repulsors and nearly succeeded in blasting off the toes of his left foot—though at the same time, he did manage to take out the better part of a knot of Hydra flunkies that Phil had been battling seconds before.

Phil staggered back a couple steps, one gloved hand pressed to the side of his helmeted head.

"Director?" Tony crackled at him.

"'m okay. They rang my bells a little. I'm okay, though." Phil didn't sound okay, he sounded shaken, which wasn't anything like the usual Phil the Unflappable.

"Dear God, so many..." Phil added, a second later, almost too low for Tony to hear through his distorted feed.

“Got him?” Clint’s voice snapped, beneath the whining in Tony’s left ear.

“J, maybe kill the mosquitoes?” Tony hadn’t the slightest idea what Clint was talking about. Got him? Got who?

The whining cycled higher, then abruptly quit, which left Tony’s ear ringing like alarm bells, all on its own power. Damn.

“Got nothing,” he answered, listing a few degrees more. He didn’t want to drop lower, for obvious reasons (many, many men with guns), but he also knew the effects of plummeting from a great height onto concrete, and preferred to avoid them if he could.

“J.A.R.V.I.S.? Any day now?”

“I am currently working on the problem, sir,” J informed him, sounding testy.

Clint--going on instinct, Tony guessed--fired one of his special ‘splodey arrows right at where Mr. Cinemax’s feet had been before he blanked out of existence.

The arrow did its thing. Bodies flew.

One of them— _ha, take that, fool!_ \--being the guy in the shiny white movie-screen suit, who rewinked into sight just long enough for Kurt (somehow also hurtling through the air, but in a controlled and, yes, undeniable sexy kind of way, to whip-crack his useful (and ever-sassy) tail around the dude’s neck and teleport him off to the gods knew where.

Hell. Siberia. Outer Mongolia. Off the top of Berlin’s tallest building. Tony wasn’t picky.

After all, he guessed he knew what Mr. Cinemax had been trying to accomplish: namely, to activate the Winter Soldier.

Which was pretty much exactly what their side didn’t need. Which meant they weren’t going to let it happen.

At any rate, Circus Skills-2, Hi-Tech-0—so much for his PhD in engineering and other advanced degrees. Clearly he’d wasted his time and his father’s money. He should have learned archery.

Or tumbling.

Tony’s opticals sizzled, farted and gave an overexcited-toddler kind of shriek. Tony drifted semi-sideways to the left a little more, briefly corrected to upright, and then started leaning to starboard instead. It wasn’t exactly what he’d call an improvement.

“J!” he bleated, with a little extra patheticness for good measure.

Dammit, he could feel Loki somewhere near. He could goddamn _feel_ him, that weird feeling he'd experienced more than once in the past, like being surrounded by a vast night sky shimmering with stars, in a place without light pollution.

The feeling, Tony realized, of Loki amping up to do something major in the way of magic.

“J, pretty please?" he pleaded, desperate now.  "Sugar on it?”

Lok? he called out inside his head. _Loki, dammit, are you there? Can you hear me, baby?_

Tony thought maybe he felt something, a shifting in the sensation of vastness, but that wasn’t the answer he wanted or needed. He wanted Loki’s real presence, warm and quirky and loved, inside him. He needed to hear Loki’s voice, to touch every centimeter of his body and make sure every last bit of him was okay.

“Goddamn it, J!” he yelled, which wasn’t exactly fair, but what was, in this world? J.A.R.V.I.S. would understand—none of Tony’s anger was actually directed towards him, it was the anger of frustration, and loss, and fear.

Five long seconds, a few _zzzeeps_ and _bzzzs_ and J had the whole shebang back on line. Tony had visuals and stabilizers and was poised to join the rest of the team in kicking a little covert operative ass.

“Apologies,” J.A.R.V.I.S. murmured, sounding, for once, almost actually apologetic.

“Not your fault. Worse things happen at sea,” Tony answered, panting, hyperventilating inside his helmet, knowing he needed to calm the hell down--he really, really, really needed to calm the hell down--already scanning for Loki down there in all the mess, with visuals and every single other tool at his disposal, overlapping screens of info flickering rapidly in his vision.

He glimpsed Kurt a second time, up high, sticking with both feet and one hand to the ragged corner of the building Tony had blasted. Kurt's long tail lashed, a thin indigo whip against all the grayness.  His face turned skyward, where the gray winter clouds of Berlin had turned half a dozen shades of violet, each of those shades streaked with lightning.

Cue Thor.

“Nice of you to join us,” Tony muttered, trying to blink the after-flashes out of his sight.

The god of thunder had hit the ground running. Bolt after bolt sizzled down from the heavens, only to be caught on Thor’s upraised hammer-of-worthiness.  He looked bigger than usual—if such a thing was possible.

He also appeared--no doubt about it--completely pissed.

Tony counted to ten as the biggest blast of all lighted Thor up like a Christmas tree, all that energy coalescing around him in an aura of jagged light. Tony was still blinking a whole new crop of purple after-images out of his vision when he caught the boom of the thunder god rising high above the surging mass of humanity, then flashing down again, his boots hitting the street with a noise audible even from on high, more forceful, even, than the roar of battle.

“Loki!” Thor bellowed. “Loki! Brother!”

The worse things that happened at sea now clearly included (from Hydra’s perspective, at least), “attack by Viking,” because Thor, who up until recent events had been definitely tending toward smiley, jolly and content (to go with his original flavors of sometimes-grim and frequently-confused), now appeared to have discovered yet another facet to his personality, one that could only be called, “Berserker Rage!!!”

Thor, it seemed, hadn’t received Steve-o’s nine million “Good Guys Don’t Kill” memos. The god of thunder cut, it could be said without exaggeration, something of a swathe through their enemies, heading in an unwavering line toward an alley that ran between the squat gray building that Tony had blasted and the equally squat gray building beside it. After which, it might also be said—again without the slightest need to exaggerate—that there weren’t quite enough Hydra goon scraps left to a stuff a single bockwurst.

Maybe a cocktail weenie, but certainly not a bockwurst.

Tony felt sicker than ever. The hammer, as it swung around Thor’s head, gave off a high, keening, desperate, panic-inducing sound, a sound that made Tony's arm hair, as well as the hair on the back of his neck, stand on end. The sounds Thor himself made—low, guttural and equally desperate, scared and alarmed him.

The Big Guy sounded crazy. How did a usually decent, good-humored--even placid--kind of guy come back from that sort of thing?

“Holy crap,” Bruce said in Tony’s earpiece. He’d been left behind to hover the stealthed-out Quinjet above them, with express orders not to go green unless absolutely needed, on the grounds that the Avengers, when traveling in a foreign country without permission from the government, could probably stand to miss out on the inevitable _“Hulk Trashes Berlin”_ bad press.

"Guys…” Bruce continued, and his tone held conflicting notes of _“I find myself unwillingly impressed_ ” and “ _I’m gonna puke_.”

“Guys…” he tried again. “Guys, Thor isn’t playing.”

“Fucking-A,” Clint chimed in, sounding sick too.

Cap yelled something might have been noble and heroic, but Tony couldn’t make out a word.

A second (shorter, fatter) guy in another Mr. Cinemax suit said a different word in Russian, his amplified voice, shrill with terror, rising above the noise of the battle. Despite Thor’s swathe, Clint’s arrows, Cap’s shield, his own blasts, Sam's... whatever, and Phil and Natasha’s big-ass guns, the bad guys kept coming, as if somewhere nearby was parked an endless fleet of evil Hydra clown cars packed chock-full of cannon fodder, resulting in a never-ending flood of faceless black-clad bodies.

Voices and shots rang off the sides of the buildings, Mjolnir kept up a droning vicious whine, and…

“Rusted,” J said crisply in Tony’s ear. Which Tony honestly didn’t think he was. In point of fact, he knew he wasn’t. Vibranium, of which his suit was constructed, wasn’t subject to oxidization, thank you very much, and maybe his left-hand repulsor seemed to be firing a little wonky, but everything else appeared A-1.

“Second word of the activation code,” Natasha snapped out, firing a never-ending stream as she simultaneously flung herself through the air, smashing faces and breaking balls. “If they get through the sequence…”

“Not something we need,” Phil finished, in his uber-calm Phil-voice. He wasn’t just wielding one of his regular big guns, but a size XXL special, like something that weirdo-from-the future Cable might have strapped to the stump of his arm. Tony would have made a crack about overcompensating, but didn’t have it in him.

 _Baby,_ he thought. _Loki, where the hell are you?_

His sensors weren’t fucked up again (at least, Tony didn’t think they were), but the intel he was catching from them appeared to be utter bullshit—temperature readings all over the place, abrupt energy bursts, light on spectrums even J.A.R.V.I.S. couldn’t interpret.

“It’s Loki, isn’t it?” Tony found himself gasping. “J, give me some good news—it’s Loki, right?”

He’d caught a flash of blue in the distance, between two close-set buildings. A flash of almost sky-blue, shades paler than Kurt’s indigo.

Kurt bamfed off the side of the building at the exact moment Tony began his downward swoop.

“I…” J began. “I seem to be having…”

Tony tried to scan the crowd for his German friend, watching for violet smoke and dark-edged flame, straining his ears for the dull boom of Kurt’s reappearance.

Suddenly, there he was, bamfing again at ground level, down where Tony had caught that barely-glimpsed flash of blue. Kurt’s voice rose to him, thin and unintelligible with distance. It sounded like he might be arguing, insistently, with someone in his native tongue.

Another flash, and Kurt was gone again.

“Uh, guys,” Bruce chimed in two seconds later, “I, um, guys… We have appear to have acquired a Winter Soldier on the QuinJet.”

“Activated?” Natasha snapped.

“Is he okay?” Steve demanded, sounding tense and more—emotionally shredded, nearly out of his head with worry. “Is he injured?”

“He seems a little groggy,” Bruce answered, in his doctor voice. Tony imagined him doing doctor-type things to go with it. “He seems… He seems okay, actually. Oh, here’s Steve!”

“Ja, I thought he would best know how to help his friend,” Kurt explained. “James didn’t fight me, Captain. Loki said he wouldn’t.”

“Loki?” Tony found himself shrieking. If Steve had sounded tense, he was pretty sure he himself sounded more-or-less deranged. “Kurt, what the fuck? Kurt…!”

“He’s okay,” Steve said, his voice shaky with relief, hoarse with emotion. “He doesn’t seem injured. He’s not… I mean, he’s just Bucky. Just Bucky.”

“Peachy,” Tony snarked. He couldn’t see anything, even though he’d hit ground level. He bulldozed forward, awkward in his armor, blasting or bludgeoning away any goons that blocked his path.

Damn, he could swear… Again, a patch of blue…

“Loki! Loki, baby, c’mon!” he yelled, knowing that brief blue flash could have been anything. A reflection. A dropped umbrella. The product of a jet-lagged middle-aged man’s imagination.

Anything in the world.

 _Baby,_ Tony thought, as hard as he could. _Baby, where are you? I thought I saw you._

Abruptly, he hit something hard, immovable--Thor’s broad back, it turned out. The god of thunder’s swathe-cutting had stopped. Mjolnir lay, half turned over, dangling from the leather thong around his wrist.

Natasha breathed another Russian swear, which Clint chased with the exclamation. “Holy… Fuck. A. Duck.”

Which was a new one, even for him.

Loki, Tony realized, had parked himself on the edge of the sidewalk, just standing there—flying bullets be damned--barefoot, dressed in his skinny jeans and an incredibly ratty brown sweater that clearly wasn't his own, a garment simultaneously sizes too big and inches too short for him.

“Baby?” Tony said, shakily. His honey looked skinny and worn and like he’d just woken up, which given the hour—Loki never having been much of a morning person-- probably wasn’t far from the truth. He also appeared to be juggling about sixty fiery green hula hoops, of varying sizes, just above each hand.

“Loki,” Thor cried out in a choked voice. “Loki. Brother!”

Loki gave them both a big grin, delighted as a little kid, though his green eyes remained vacant, as if he was gazing at something Tony couldn’t see, located at an incredible distance from that Berlin street.

Tony couldn’t tell if the battle had suddenly and abruptly stopped, or if he himself had eyes and ears for nothing but Loki.

“I must concentrate,” Loki said softly. “It is difficult, and far away.”

“What is, Lok?” Tony asked, desperate now. He didn't get any of this, didn't understand what was happening, and J wasn’t currently helping. Maybe he didn’t get it either.

“The place is far away, Tony," Loki told him dreamily. "The Between.”

“Doesn’t really clarify things, baby.”

Loki’s mouth curved into a slight smile, though his look remained distant. He gave a casual wave with one hand, all black-polished claws and long blue fingers, the emerald circles whirling and sparkling until there was too much brightness for Tony to see clearly.

Far away, a terrified voice bellowed Russian words, gasping between each one, _“Simnátsatʹ! Rassvét! Péčʹ! Dévjitʹ! Dabrasirdéčnyj! Vozvraščénije na ródinu! Adín! Gruzavój vagón!”_

“Seventeen,” J.A.R.V.I.S. translated quietly, maybe for no better reason than he’d found himself at a total loss, and had nothing else to do or say. “Dawn. Stove—or possibly furnace? Nine. Kindhearted. Homecoming. One—or, perhaps, alone. Freight car.”

To Tony, none of it made the least fucking sense. Maybe the words meant something to James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes at one time. Maybe they hadn’t. Who the hell knew?

“Alone,” Loki repeated, in pretty much the exact tone J had used in his litany of nonsense. “Alone.”

The circles spun around him, their speed ever-increasing. Tony’s ears went dead, both ringing and physically numb, then alive again with a dull boom so low it lay at the very threshold of his hearing. Inside the helmet, he felt warm trickles flowing out of his ears, down across his lips.

Just like that, ten thousand black-ops Hydra flunkies and half-a-dozen guys in Cinemax suits just fucking disappeared, as if they’d never been.

Loki pressed his long, slender hands together; there went the flashing hula hoops, also as if they’d never existed. All that remained was a battered residential block and the still forms of Natasha, Clint, Phil and Sam Wilson, his wide wings spread, all four of them splayed out, motionless, on the concrete.

“Very much alive,” J.A.R.V.I.S. informed him. “Unconscious, yes, but very much alive. You, sir, were somewhat protected by your helmet.”

“May we go home now?” Loki asked. “I want to go home.”

He paused, his green eyes huge and sad, anxiety clear on every line of his face. “I did as your Captain asked, Tony. Am I safe now? Will you.. _can_ you... make me safe from him?”


	2. Leavin' on a Quinjet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interpersonal relationships, Avengers-style, on the flight home from Berlin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who don't follow the X-Men titles, Kurt Wagner (aka Nightcrawler) died in a singularly unpleasant way while saving the life of a child. A few years later, owing to circumstances far too twisty-turny to go into here, he returned. All we really need to know for this series is the dead/suddenly-not-dead part of the tale.
> 
>  _Saturday Night Live's_ 1994 sketch, " _Total Bastard Airlines_ " featured an obnoxious flight attendant (David Spade) who uttered a bored and sarcastic "Buh-BYE!" to each passenger as he or she left the plane, thus giving us the example of how to say farewell in the snidest possible way.
> 
> The joule (named after the English physicist James Prescott Joule) is a unit of energy equal to: 1) "the energy transferred to (or work done on) an object when a force of one newton acts on that object in the direction of its motion through a distance of one meter"; 2) "the energy dissipated as heat when an electric current of one ampere passes through a resistance of one ohm for one second." I lack the power to reword either of  
> these definitions in any coherent way.
> 
> "ass over teakettle"=head over heels. From what I could discover, the expression, in its somewhat more proper form, "tail over teakettle," first appeared in _Everybody's Magazine_ , circa 1927. The "ass" variant showed up five years later, in 1932, within the pages of the quarterly periodical, _Pagany_ , edited by Richard Johns.
> 
> A learning curve is the length of time a person needs to acquire new skills.
> 
> " _Thou shalt not kill_ " is at the top of the Ten Commandments, appearing in Exodus 20:13.
> 
> Tony's punning on "Lifesaver" as in the round candy with the hole in the middle.
> 
> " _Lieber Gott, vergibt mir_ "=Dear God, forgive me (putting it in the Imperative Case, I believe, makes for an especially heartfelt plea). Native German speakers, please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong in this.

* * *

Kurt, as the only one on board the QuinJet not currently in either mid-mental-meltdown or recovering from having been magically--or otherwise--knocked out flat on the tiles (cartoon birds tweeting around heads optional), got tagged to be their pilot.

Being Kurt, he took the request perfectly in stride, as if being asked to fly an unfamiliar plane out of a country where said aircraft had first occupied airspace, then landed _sans_ documentation or any kind of official approval, on about two seconds notice didn’t strike him as any big deal. Instead, he slid into the cockpit, strapped up and started running a pre-flight check with his usual cheerful efficiency.

“You're sure don’t want the five minute tutorial?" Tony asked. " _QuinJets for Dummies_? A couple quick pointers?” His questions occupied about the same amount of time it took Kurt, of the mutant abilities and super-quick reflexes, to finish his run-down.

Also, he'd peeked. Kurt hadn’t missed a single step.

“Do you believe I need _QuinJets for Dummies_?” Kurt gave one of his warm, fangy smiles, amusement glinting in his candleflame eyes. _“Nein, nein_. Everything’s good.” His powerful left hand rested on Tony’s forearm, delivering a brief, affectionate squeeze, though Kurt, in the midst of his vertical takeoff, never took his eyes off the instruments, “ _Ach, lieber Freund_ , don’t worry. Go back to Loki.”

“Hell, you know me, Kurt,” Tony responded. “Beneath this roguish charm, I worry. Always. It’s what I do.”

Kurt laughed. “You do, but in this case you don’t need to. I’ve most likely logged more flight hours than you have, Tony.”

“Aw, that’s just because you spent most of your twenties sober. I coulda done that.”

“I still have nearly a year of my twenties left,” Kurt teased (clearly, he wasn't counting those two or three years when he was, um... kinda dead). “I’ll have to see what I can manage, _ja_?”

With those words he accelerated out of lift-off into maximum-speed-over-occupied-landmass, all just as smooth as milk, his tail waving a jaunty little, “Buh-bye, Tony!” gesture behind him.

At that point it occurred to Tony that, sobriety aside, Kurt had piloted the X-Men’s bigger, trickier-to-maneuver and infinitely-more-complicated SR-71 Blackbird on more-or-less a million dangerous missions and probably could have brought the QuinJet home in his sleep, with or without the help of either J. or the autopilot.

So, thanks again to ol' Chuck Xavier for teaching his kids their many useful skills.

It had been kind of his German friend to humor him—but that was Kurt for you.  Kind.

Tony went.

Silence reigned back in the passenger section. Some obliging soul—most likely Clint, since he tended to be the one most interested in snacks and beverages, even during brief flights--had played steward. Everyone now had a drink except for Meltdown Steve, who never really seemed to grasp the concept of a cup holder even at the best of times, and had subsequently set his coffee down on the neighboring seat, where it spilled, saturating the upholstery.

Tony wondered how well magic worked at getting stains out of leather. Probably at least as well as it worked removing Hydra goons from Berlin. Which was pretty damn well, all things considered.

Phil had his seat reclined, while Clint--steward duties complete--held an instant ice-pack to the giant lump on the side of his boyfriend's head. Director appeared to be bitching mildly about his injury, in his usual pleasant tone. Natasha supervised.

As Tony passed, she glanced up briefly, her lips curving into a familiar Mona Lisa smile, her eyes (sometimes blue and sometimes a greenish color of a much lighter shade than Loki’s), flashed over his face, learning everything she needed to know about the State of Tony in a microsecond.

Either recent events hadn't left Nat (brief spell of unconsciousness aside) the least bit shaken, or she outstripped the rest of them by miles when it came to her ability to not let stuff show. She made a nice contrast with Steve, all by himself in the row ahead--though Sam Wilson, seated back behind Phil, kept shooting his good buddy concerned looks.

Cap, who seemed close to the edge even before they left New York, appeared increasingly closer to imploding into a puddle of red-white-and-blue goo.  Even closer than he had for the past couple days, which was saying something and, needless to say, that something wasn’t exactly good.  He'd fought like the stalwart hero he was through most of the battle, but now that they were safe and homeward bound, his face had gone dead white, with an expression of shocked emptiness.

Meanwhile, across the aisle and two rows back, his bosom pal Bucky studiously avoided him.

Tony had to note, though, that for all his avoidance, Barnes didn’t exactly look miserable. He’d opted to occupy an aisle seat, to the left of Loki, in the middle seat.  Thor, in turn, had parked himself on his brother's left.

The expression on the thunder god's face was both somber and tender as he fed Bucky and Loki Poptarts from the seemingly endless supply in his backpack.

Between bites (Loki was really inhaling those puppies), the former god of mischief spoke in soothing tones to the once-time Winter Soldier. Slowly the wire-tight tension released from Barnes’s jaw and shoulders, until at last he simply laid his head on Loki’s shoulder and dropped off to sleep, like someone had switched off his lights.

Tony watched, entranced, his heart feeling painful and awkward and a little too big for his chest.

He had Loki back. He did. He really, _really_ did. This wasn’t a dream.

“Everything’s safe,” Loki told him softly, not wanting to disturb his snuggle-buddy.  His eyes held Tony’s, green and unfathomable as the ocean. “The words have been broken asunder, and the foul spell will no longer work upon him. Is it all right now, beloved, if I sleep for a little?”

Beloved.  Gods, how he'd ached to hear that word.  Less than a handful of days with Loki gone had felt like a century.

“You can sleep all the way home if you want, babe,” Tony answered, wishing like hell that Thor would haul his godly Asgardian ass out of the neighboring seat and let them be together, Loki’s hand in his, Loki’s head at peace on his shoulder as he slept, the way Barnes’s currently rested on Loki’s.

When that happened, Tony could finally, totally believe, once and for all. He wouldn’t have to keep mentally pinching himself, thinking this might be some kind of crazy wish-fulfillment dream, the kind that tears your heart open when you find out it's not true.

 _I haven’t forgotten you_ , Loki told him inside his head, sweetly, lovingly, though his tone was languid, indicating pretty clearly that Loki found himself too exhausted to expend even so much a single extra Joule of energy if he didn't have to. _However, my brother’s mind is uneasy and he greatly requires comfort._

Thor, with his endless supply of toaster pastries, looked perfectly placid, but who was Tony to question? Maybe, like Natasha, Thor had learned, over time, to reveal nothing.  Maybe, though Tony had figured out that the thunder god actually did possess way more range of emotion than he previously would have guessed, Thor just didn't have that kind of face.

 _I apologize_ , Loki added, in the same wan tone, _For I know I ought to comfort you as well, and you are my beloved, which means you should take precedence over even so dear a brother..._

_Loki, babe, don’t worry about it--or me.  If anyone deserves comforting, it's you.  Right now you shouldn't have to think about anybody but yourself._

Loki winced, though he clearly tried to conceal his discomfort.  Tony suspected--much to his chagrin--that his talking-in-the-head voice still needed work, that he was inadvertently shouting Loki’s ears (interior, rather than external) off like a maniac.

 _We have time_ , Tony added, trying his hardest for an appropriate inside-the-head voice. _Soon enough I'll get you all to myself, right?_

 _Sweetness..._ Loki murmured.

Warmth rippled through Tony's body, and he knew that came from Loki, even as his fiancé’s emerald eyes, sleepy and also bloodshot as hell, smiled back at him.

 _Please, beloved, there’s no immediate threat...?_   Loki asked. A weakish wave of apprehension followed the words, after a couple seconds had passed.  He glanced at the narrow slice of more-than-slightly-tattered spangle-suit just visible between the seats, then shuddered.

 _Damn straight,_ Tony answered. _Trust me, babe--nothing bad’s gonna happen to you. No threats. No ultimatums. Captain Stick-Up-His-Butt and I will definitely have words._

_You are always good, best-loved, though..._

Whatever Loki had meant to say trailed off when he just couldn’t force himself to stay awake a moment longer. His head sagged over to Thor's shoulder, just as Bucky’s head had sagged onto his.

Thor, still looking mildly stupified, even if he hadn't been one of those knocked ass-over-teakettle, shifted his large self in the too-narrow seat, both brawny arms moving to surround his brother's slumbering body.

 _I will protect you always, from each and every threat_ , his posture said, _Whatever the cost might be._

Tony felt glad(dish) then that he hadn’t insisted the thunder god vacate his seat after all and let him take the space instead. Maybe Thor really did need comforting, just like Loki told him. Maybe the best way to do that was to allow Thor to be protective.

Maybe that protectiveness allowed Thor to feel strong and in control again.

What he’d mistaken for Berserker rage hadn’t been, Tony realized, in a sudden flash of inspiration. Thor had been desperate to reach his brother, had plunged through that Hydra mob without a single consideration for his own personal safety, driven on by past history Tony would probably never know—events Loki couldn’t remember and Thor would never tell, some of it worse, even (or so Tony suspected), than the tale of Loki’s conception.

They were a paradox, those two—so old, and yet so painfully, vulnerably young. It served him as a reminder not always to be so dickish to Thor. The Earth—or Midgard, if you would—he'd once known lay a thousand years behind him, which to the Asgardian might not even seem long at all, any more than the late 90’s seemed like ancient history to Tony--and yet, for Thor, every fucking thing had changed.

He deserved more of a learning curve than Tony--than any of them--had given him.

Tony headed back to the galley.  On his way there, he nearly tripped on Mjolnir, weapon of the worthy, now lying abandoned in the middle of the aisle, a beautifully crafted thing and yet inexpressibly brutal, made to pulverize the body of a man, alien, or anything beyond or between.

It surprised him a little that Thor had dropped his precious hammer where it lay.  That the weapon--its intricate etchings now obscured by blood and other stuff Tony really didn't want to think about--sat all on its own, befouling the black industrial carpet, meant something, Tony just wasn’t certain what that something might be.

He had to wonder, too, at what age had Thor been taught to fight with warhammers.  Had he actually been old enough to fully understand what a weapon like that would do to a fragile mortal body?

Maybe things like that didn’t even matter in Asgard, where instant or almost-instant healing might well have been taken for granted--only then Tony flashed back to the films he’d seen, of White Loki when he’d first come after the Tesseract, Loki with his gray and sweaty skin, and his haunted eyes, Loki staggering on his way out of the compound, and Clint reaching to steady him.

He remembered Loki's bitterness when he spoke about his brother.

What the hell kind of cognitive dissonance would it set up, to have a big brother who routinely beat people—well, sentient lifeforms, anyway--to death with a bigass hammer and was still called "worthy," when Loki wasn’t, and never would be.  Thor wasn't a bad guy by any means, he was just what his society made him--and the gods (had such beings existed) help them both.

Tony thought of the story Kurt had told, of a young man with a sewn-up mouth, clinging to his enchanted son, the only one in all of Asgard who would have helped him, the two of them alone in the stables.  The _Jötunn _who knew nothing about his own identity, the boy who wasn't allowed to be a boy.__

____

Fucking, fucking Odin.

__

For about the millionth time, Tony felt heartbroken about Loki--but this time he hurt for the thunder god too. He found himself returning to squeeze Thor’s stone-hard shoulder, allowing his hand to linger. The god’s clear blue eyes flashed up to his briefly—tired, sad, a little defensive.

__

Jesus, those poor kids. Those poor fucking all-but-immortal kids. If Tony had been a praying man—which, let’s face it, he never would be—he would have prayed for divine retribution, prayed that someday, somewhere, Odin would get his, that he’d be made to pay for his sons’ grief, that the unholy Assfather could be made to regret what he’d done.

__

Tony knew he never would. The Odins and the Uncle Obies and the Hydra goons of the world never did. They lacked the moral compass to feel shame or deep regret; they just resented getting caught, or otherwise inconvenienced. Normal people had no real way to get back at them, no way to hurt them as much as they hurt you, or others.  Even if you destroyed yourself by sinking to their level...

__

Fuck it, that was just a different way of letting them win.

__

Maybe, though, at some future time--when he, and Loki, and everyone felt stronger--the King of Asgard could at least be stopped from hurting anyone else, ever, ever again.

__

Tony felt suddenly exhausted himself--not so much from the battle, in which he’d contributed, basically, nothing (and, yes, his suits would be shielded up the yin-yang from here on out, no more interference, no more useless off-kilter hovering)—but from lack of sleep and days of emotional strain.

__

He slumped in the pathetic non-galley, leaning on the steel counter while his coffee brewed.  He momentarily considered adding a little somethin’-somethin’ from the bottle hidden behind the microwave, but knew that was the last thing he, or Loki, or the team needed.

__

Instead, Tony groped in the back, in and around the slightly dusty wires, and brought the bottle out. He stared for a minute at the smooth glass, the rich amber liquid, the classily understated label, before passing the bottle off to Bruce, who’d approached for a little hovering activity of his own, of the sympathetic (not to mention concerned) friend variety.

__

“Do me a favor, buddy?” Tony asked. “Dump this down the head?”

__

Bruce's face took on a funny, half-rueful look. “I thought we’d found all of them.”

__

“Nope. You guys missed a classic spot. It’s the last one, though. I swear.” Tony sucked in a deep breath. “So, dump it, okay? I don’t need it.”

__

“Yeah,” Bruce said, swirling the Glenmorangie gently around the bottle.

__

“ _Hell_ , yeah!” He gave a sudden grin, delighted, like a man who’d found himself, just that moment, totally convinced of something he never in a million years thought he’d believe in.

__

“Good for you, Tone,” he added quietly. “Good for you.”

__

"Yeah, well…” Tony shrugged. His cheeks felt hot and he turned away, fiddling with the coffee machine. “I thought I’d bring our pilot a cuppa Joe. A little reward for his services.”

__

He didn’t really want to say the next words, because a part of him still kind of wanted to see Steve squirm, or possibly even suffer, but said them anyway.

__

Because Loki said he was a good man. Because he was going to be a father. Just because.

__

“Check in with our fearless leader, will you, Bruce? He’s up there decomposing or something.” Tony could feel Bruce’s gaze, warm, steady and sympathetic, right between his shoulders. He added cream to Kurt’s coffee, just the way his German friend liked it.

__

“Okay,” Bruce said, then, “Tony…?”

__

“Yeah?” Tony put a black plastic lid on the cup, which was covered with lines, thin as pencil markings, in turquoise, green and cobalt. He had a hard time looking at them; they messed with his vision.

__

“Everything worked out. You found Loki and got him back. What we did, what Thor did, what Loki did… sometimes things have to be done. Sometimes there isn’t another way. Sometimes they just have to happen. Sometimes there _is_ such a thing as pure, unredeemable evil, with no gray areas, and it needs to be stopped.”

__

“Yeah,” Tony said, turning around, the warm cup in his hand. “I believe that.” He looked into Bruce’s face, into his dark eyes behind the slightly-smudged lenses, at the kind lines around them.

__

"I hope you do too, bro."

__

Bruce smiled--a kind smile, though more than a little sad. “In this case—absolutely. In certain other cases? I try to.”

__

“In one particular case?”

__

Bruce shut his eyes, probably transported, in that moment, many years back into his past, to one specific night, to one particular cemetery, one exact grave. To the stone with his beloved mother's name. To his father's malicious words--words worse than physical pain, that had been eating into Bruce's soul for years, in the same way that repugnant _Traumfresser_ worm had gnawed its way through Loki's brain.

__

“You and I were brought up differently,” Bruce said. He'd clearly tried to keep his voice light, but it broke instead. “’ _Thou shall not kill_ …’”

__

“Void in certain cases,” Tony said. “Your dad had been locked up. They let him out. He would have poisoned your life, Bruce, every day that he lived. He would have poisoned other lives too, if he could.”

__

“Well, it could be that’s no excuse,” Bruce answered, his voice tense, but not the least sign of green in his eyes or his skin. He might be always angry, but these days maybe less so. These days maybe he’d actually come to believe, as Tony was starting to, that he wasn’t such a bad guy, that maybe all the guilt and shame and self-hatred were something that could be discarded.

__

_I love you, my brother,_ Tony thought. _I love you, and you are a good man, one of the best I know_.

__

Bruce smiled again, as if he’d heard Tony's words. “Kurt’s coffee is going to get cold,” he said. “And I will talk to Steve. We’ll make this work.”

__

“Catch you in a bit?” Tony asked.

__

Bruce smiled yet again.

__

Behind him, as Tony moved back up the aisle, carefully stepping over Mjolnir, he heard the steady _glug-glug-glug_ of expensive single malt being poured down the head.  The sound made him grin slightly too—a little ruefully, but still more than a little proud of himself.

__

He felt no regret. None at all.

__

So, yay him!

__

Up front, Tony slumped into the co-pilot’s seat, passing Kurt the disposable sippy cup. Beyond the windshield nothing showed but silvery-gray sky, the darker gray waves of the Atlantic, whitecapped, roiling far below

__

“Ah, _vielen Dank_!” his German friend exclaimed, inhaling fragrant steam through the plastic lid’s tiny hole. “Nectar of the gods! You are, _mein Freund,_ undeniably a life-saver.”

__

“That’s me,” Tony answered. “Though I actually feel more like an overcooked lasagna noodle. Also, if I am a Lifesaver, could I please be the minty kind? My mouth feels like I licked an ashtray. Which, no, I don't know by experience. I extrapolated.”

__

Kurt laughed, and Tony wondered, not for the first time, what it felt like to be him. There was good, after all, and there was _good_.

__

Tony wondered if his friend ever had a day when he just said, _Fuck all this niceness. Today I will be selfish and indifferent, just like everybody else._

__

Kurt turned his head and gave Tony a look, causing him to wonder just how much, these days, the younger man managed to pick up of what he happened to be thinking at any given moment.

__

“You’re a sensible guy Kurt,” he said. “Explain to me what just happened?”

__

“We went on a journey. Now we’re bringing Loki and Sgt. Barnes home again, safe and well.”

__

“As simple as that.”

__

“As simple as that,” Kurt echoed, his velvet-furred face the picture of wisdom, almost painfully kind.

__

_Did he kill them?_ Tony wanted to ask. Granted, Hydra goons were evil, unquestionably so, as close to devoid of any redeeming qualities as any group of people on earth, but still…

__

There had been so many of them, and they'd been so frightened at the end. Add on to that how much he didn’t want Loki to have to start again down that ugly road, the road where lives didn’t matter—even if they were talking about the worst of the worst.

__

“Ach, Tony.” Kurt sighed. “You are a good man.”

__

“Not specially,” Tony grumbled.

__

“You want so much good for Loki. You wish to be his knight in shining armor.”

__

Tony glanced down at the sweaty, crumpled undersuit he’d worn beneath his Iron Man getup. Despite eating way better than he had, literally, in years, he’d lost weight—probably his rejuvenated metabolism, courtesy of Loki—the black knit fabric sagged around his belly and  
knees.

__

“A knight in dirty longjohns, maybe. I look like a derelict,” Tony said.

__

Kurt laughed softly, mindful of the sleepers behind them.

__

“That whole deal with Thor…” Tony began.

__

“Thor is also a good man. He is, as well, a prince of a warrior culture, and he loves his brother very much, all the more so for the two them having been so distant, and having let one another down in their earlier years.”

__

“So don’t judge, that’s what you’re saying?”

__

“He’s not the only man who ever killed.” Kurt crossed himself, hand moving swiftly down his chest, then from shoulder to shoulder. There was a whole world of, _Lieber Gott, vergibt mir_ in that simple, graceful gesture, and Kurt’s eyes for that moment, dimmed slightly.  He looked thoughtful and a bit distant.

__

Tony wondered what his friend was remembering—Thor, or his known-for-his-brutality lover, Logan, or maybe even himself.

__

Kurt sighed again. He studied Tony’s face for a moment, then continued, “Loki didn’t kill those men. I don’t believe he could, not as he is now. To feel their deaths within his mind..."

__

Tony waited for his friend to continue.

__

"Loki opened a portal and sent them to another world,” Kurt concluded.

__

“A crappy world, I hope,” Tony said, not above a little petty vengeance.

__

Kurt laughed suddenly. “Indeed, yes!”

__

“Good,” Tony answered, not even sure why he felt so shaky. Released tension? Relief? "Yeah. Good."

__

He leaned back in the co-pilot’s chair, glad to be there in the quiet, darkened cockpit, watching colored lights dance a soothing pattern across the instrument panels.

__

Within seconds he, too, had fallen asleep.

__


	3. "Ya Got Trouble"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve continues to struggle, while Loki has a hard time not overthinking everything that's happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony's riffing on the song _"Ya Got Trouble_ " (with a capital T that rhymes with B that stands for Bucky), one of Prof. Harold Hill's tunes from Meredith Willson's 1957 Broadway hit _The Music Man_. The original lyrics are:
> 
> _Ya got trouble, folks, right here in River City._   
>  _Trouble with a capital "T"_   
>  _And that rhymes with "P" and that stands for pool!_
> 
> "Knew him from Adam" (also, "knew him from Adam's off-ox") is one of those odd little twentieth century Americanisms that seems to have sprung up from nowhere. In this instance, "Adam" stands in for "man," so to not know someone from Adam means the person you're talking about is as strange to you as any other stranger, that nothing about him sets him apart from the mass of humanity. Also, although it has nothing to do with the chapter, I now feel compelled to explain that the "off ox" in a team of oxen pulling a wagon or other conveyance is the one on the right. As it's farther away from the driver (presumed to be sitting on the left), the off ox is less visible and gets less attention. The term "off ox" can also refer to a clumsy or otherwise awkward person.
> 
>  _O Captain! My Captain!_ is a poem ( written in 1865) by Walt Whitman.
> 
> The "Dodge" in the phrase "get the hell outta Dodge" refers to Dodge City, Kansas, setting of the long-running TV series _Gunsmoke_ (1955 - 1975). Although originally an exhortation aimed at the villain-of-the-week to encourage him to leave with due haste, the phrase has come to refer to the making of quick exits in general, particularly from any place where one feels unwelcome.
> 
> Apropos of nothing in particular, Bucky's serial number apparently contradicts his origin story. It's accurate as to location (New York City), but indicates that he was a draftee rather than a volunteer.
> 
> Mardi Gras ("Fat Tuesday") is the last day of feasting and celebration before the fasting and penitence of Lent, which begins on the following day, Ash Wednesday, and lasts until Easter. I'm fairly certain Lent isn't a "thing" in The Merry Old Land of Oz, but if it was, I'm equally sure an Ozian Mardi Gras would be quite something to experience.
> 
> A traditional Denver omelet contains diced ham, onions, and green bell peppers. I envision the Rosenblums' "Denver Omelet NYC" as having pastrami (beef brisket that's been brined, partially dried, seasoned, then smoked and steamed) in place of the more traditional ham.

* * *

The Trouble (with a capital T that rhymes with B that stands for Bucky) began about thirty seconds after Kurt nestled the QuinJet into her usual berth atop Avengers Tower. Predictably, if (probably) unintentionally, said trouble started with Cap, because of course Steve--for being a guy not entirely without his own fucked-up qualities--continued to lack a certain understanding of the depths that fucked-upness had been known to reach in his fellow sentient beings.

The engines had just barely stopped humming when Cap suddenly popped up out of his seat (and along with it, apparently, out of his flight-long meltdown), striding up the aisle toward his old chum, exuding--on the surface, at least--both an abundance of good cheer and that sense of bluff, manly "hello-ol’-pal-o’-mineness" that Tony had never observed, before that particular moment, in anyone but the characters in Steve-era black-and-white-movies. He half expected the ghost of Bing Crosby to drop in and croon something nostalgic and vaguely disheartening, if you happened to listen just a little too closely to the lyrics.

Bing, in fact, failed to make his appearance, but Steve managed to call out, in a weirdly constricted kind of voice that made him sound exactly nothing like himself, "Hey, buddy! C'mon, let me give you the nickel tour of this dump, then I can show you where you’ll be bunking.”

Barnes, just barely awakened and clearly discombobulated state, mentally speaking, visibly recoiled. He clearly would have found the abrupt appearance of the late, great Bing's moldering corpse right there beside him about a thousand times less alarming, at that moment, than he found the appearance of his life-long friend.

Much like Loki, the poor guy probably remembered _something_ , but not knowing _what_ he remembered, automatically dropped into his default of "everything that seems familiar is probably bad."

In short, he looked horrified. His hands, metal and flesh, caught hold of Loki's arm, biting into the pale blue skin. Loki, barely awake himself, covered both hands gently with one of his own long, narrow hands, then murmured a few soft words into Bucky's ear.

Barnes relaxed, but only slightly. He continued to look jumpy as hell, as if the least little thing might spook him, causing a fight or flight response Tony felt fairly certain none of them wanted to experience.

Steve's face (Tony couldn't see it from his place at the back of the pack, but Natasha, after the fact, gave one of her thorough-as-usual reports) went through a whole series of expressions, each one more complicated, according to Nat--than the one before it.

Natasha, who genuinely liked Steve, even at his most Steve-ish, said she found the whole process painful to observe.

Clearly (this also according to the ever-reliable-at-least-when-she-chose-to-be Nat), it hadn't altogether occurred to Cap, in that particular moment, that maybe, just maybe, his hundred-year-old friend, having been enslaved, brainwashed, frozen, thawed, re-frozen, not to mention memory-wiped repeatedly, for a considerable part of the time when he himself had been slumbering peacefully, undisturbed in frosty-freeze at the top of the world, might not just be amnesiac and confused.

No more had it sunk through his skull that the brief Berlin-to-New York Quinjet trip might not have given Barnes sufficient time to calm the hell down from what had, beyond a doubt, been one extremely stressful day, or that his chum might also (very much so) not be all Steve remembered him being from the days of their (original) youth.

Or even somewhat the same. Or anything at all like the Bucky Steve remembered.

Poor Cap (and, yes, Tony could say that with a straight face, he wasn't entirely heartless, after all), on the other hand, remembered every particular of The-Steve-and-Bucky Story with the clarity of someone for whom those memories were all recent history. Because Steve had spent the intervening seventy years as a Capsicle, those seven decades didn't--couldn't really--exist for him. He'd sunk into his enchanted Sleeping Beauty dreams (or lack thereof) filled with love for his lifelong companion and friend while the years that marched on for others held perfectly still for him.

Maybe Steve could accept the passage of those years in the abstract, accept that computers existed and that men rarely wore hats anymore and that words like "please" and "thank you" or "yes, ma'am" weren't as common as they'd once been. He could accept that histories had been written--whether on endless pages, in endless editions of newspapers or magazines or books, or in the thousands of lines they'd drawn across an old friend's, or an old love's, once-familiar face.  Nothing, though, in all those years of history, had touched him. Steve could only be what he'd been in 1945, when the ice locked him in.

Tony knew Steve put on the old stiff upper lip, mostly hiding his mourning for the past, for the friends lost to him, or grown old, but confronted again with a Bucky barely changed, apparently as young and strong as himself, how could he help but feel what he'd always felt? How could he accept, really, in the heart of his heart, that someone he cared for so deeply no longer knew him from Adam?

It must have devastated Steve to see his Bucky, his dear friend (and more), shrink away from him, then hurt him even more to see that same friend clinging to Loki, Steve's sworn enemy, for the support Cap wanted so badly to give him. The pain of that rejection shone in Steve's eyes. He didn't look like a leader, or a captain of men, he looked like a goddamn kicked puppy.

If Bucky was free again, if he wasn't the Winter Soldier, then, in Steve's hopeful mind at least, he was supposed to be himself again.

Only he wasn't. Not now. Maybe he never would be.

 _Gods_ , Tony thought, _The poor, lost, clueless fuckers_.

Loki’s eyes, deep-green and huge, seemed to drill past Cap and everyone else in order to catch Tony's gaze, doing that thing where he stared approximately forever without blinking, until Tony’s own eyes started watering in sympathy. Loki’s skin had gone a pale, pale blue, making him look less alien (horns aside) and more like someone who’d waited outside way too long in the snow.

"But I am not the enemy," Loki murmured, his voice carrying despite the distance between them. "I am not, Tony." 

“Steve,” Natasha broke in, just the one word, calmly--even kindly--spoken, but it carried an entire world of warnings inside it.

Bruce, ubiquitous concerned-look plastered firmly in place, laid a hand on the shoulder of the spangle-suit in a non-confrontational, Bruceish kind of way. “Steve, um, maybe…?”

Loki’s head popped up from Thor’s shoulder (Thor’s jaw and neck bore definite horn-shaped imprints, and Tony could sympathize—he’d more than once considered fabricating foam horn-cozies to cushion those things, lovely as they were, but hadn’t quite figured out how to broach that particular subject with his honey). Loki's eternal death-stare broke. Instead, he blinked owlishly, glancing first to Steve, then back to Tony, his new expression one great big WHAT?

Tony shrugged, meaning, _Try to ignore him, babe. He’s mostly harmless._

He wanted to keep things casual, to present all this as no big deal, something a good meal and a long sleep could potentially cure.  At the same time, he tried really hard not to panic himself and, especially, not to allow any signs of his incipient freak-out to show through, his greatest fear that the ever-thickening tension would spook Loki too, sending him running once more to parts distant and unknown. Especially given that "mostly harmless" wasn’t exactly Loki’s experience of Steve, was it?

To Loki, Cap wasn’t all honor and apple pie, he was the scary guy who’d threatened to rip him away from his beloved found family, to imprison him, isolate him, who'd even (and, okay, there’d been Odinish interference in that bit, but still...)  brought up the distinct possibility of unethical scientific experimentation.

Furthermore, Cap shook Loki up so badly that he, for all his considerable gifts, couldn't get anywhere close to a clear reading of either Steve's thoughts or his intentions, which only served to make Loki more apprehensive.

Despite just having swum up out of a great big lake of sleepiness and uncertainty, Loki straightened, his posture altering in subtle ways, his chin lifting. Moments like that, Tony saw the warrior in him. He saw all that Loki coulda woulda shoulda been, in his previous incarnation, if not for Odin’s truly A+ parenting. He saw someone who both brought an uncomfortable, teary, prickly feeling to the backs of his eyes, and made him prouder than hell.

 _I'd prefer not to fight you_ , that posture said, _But if you wish to harm this man, prepare to go through me._

Meanwhile, the look he shot Tony--confused, almost pleading--asked, _How do I express this so that nothing ends badly?_

“Steve-o!” Tony did a little rushing-forward of his own, catching hold of his teammate’s arm in the vicinity of his adamantium-hard bicep. In a friendly way, naturally. Certainly not in any way he actually felt, which was very much that Steve wasn’t exactly his favorite person in the world these days, for all the reasons previously mentioned, and that although he could manage a basic understanding of whatever complicated emotions happened to be passing through O Captain! My Captain’s! equally-hard Super Soldier skull, the fact remained that Tony would still have liked, in his heart of hearts, to pop Steve one on his well-shaped nose, if only to relieve his own feelings.

Because Loki, naturally.

“Maybe back those horses up for a minute?” Tony said, still keeping it friendly. Again, because Loki.

 _Horses?_ Loki mouthed, brows drawing together.

Putting aside the tension of the moment, Tony couldn’t quite help but find that look of puzzlement both charming and disarming. Loki might be working on something like a nine-million-word vocabulary, and have an IQ so far beyond genius it probably couldn’t even be measured, but he still often found English slang kind of weird. It just didn’t fit in with his basic programming, which appeared to be an interesting mix of extreme literal-mindedness and epic figures of speech.

If Tony said “horses,” Loki wanted actual horses. Invariably.

Of course, Loki _always_ wanted horses. And puppies. The spillover from his thinking, at least what Tony picked up on, was often filled with a childlike longing for both. Or either.

Another, heartbreaking, thing he hadn’t failed to observe was how scared Loki tended to be of asking and being denied, as if _“No, Loki_ ” would always be the default answer to anything he hoped for, or wanted, or needed, and the more he longed for something, the less the likelihood that he would ever, ever get it. Loki often acted as if his entire previous godlike existence had been one long parade of socks and underwear for Christmas, and Loki might have forgotten the particulars of all that, but he most certainly hadn't lost the emotions.

Goddamn fucking Odin.

Barnes’s own expression wasn’t all that much different. He had a look of defeated resignation and—even minus his Winter Soldier guyliner extreme--a raccoon-mask around his eyes that could only be the result of pure, soul-deep exhaustion. He also carried a pinched white look around his mouth, pretty much the exact same look Loki tended to get when exposed to an excess of Steve.

“James Buchanan Barnes. Sergeant. Serial number 3257038,” Bucky breathed, voice hitching, as if either passing or freaking out was an imminent possibility.

Loki, on the other hand, had now begun to glow slightly, with a faint tinge of green.

Back in Berlin, right before the Hydra army disappeared like the flames of so many snuffed-out candles, Tony couldn’t help but recall that Loki had lighted things up like the Emerald City of Oz at Mardi Gras.

“Bucky…” Steve began, not nearly so hearty now, clearly teetering on his own, personal knife-edge of uncertainty.

“No, you will _not_!” Loki snapped abruptly, in the instant before he teleported both himself and Barnes the hell outta Dodge.

“Kurt!” Tony snapped.

“On it!” his German friend replied calmly, and went.

Tony reminded himself to crack a window first, next time he asked Kurt to teleport out of an enclosed space: those bamfs were pungent.

“Maybe,” said Concussion Phil, whose eyes were still slightly crossed behind their usual lenses (the left lens bearing a crack like a lopsided peace sign). “Everyone should consider going home? Freshen up. Eat something. Sleep. We can reconvene at oh-nine hundred hours tomorrow to debrief.”

He held up a hand when Steve started to argue the wisdom of this idea. “Captain, I know you’re concerned. Frankly, I can’t even imagine all you’re feeling. I’d ask you to consider, though—Sgt. Barnes has been through some major trauma. He may not know who he can trust. Why don't we give him a little time? J.A.R.V.I.S. can monitor the situation as well—if not better—than any of us.”

 _And what am I, chopped liver?_ Tony thought, but even concussed, Phil never failed to be his usual sensible self.

Tony at least maintained enough self-awareness to recognize how much he was simply strung-out and exhausted, despite his nap in the co-pilot’s seat. The only thing he could really think about clearly, just then, was how desperately he wanted (maybe even _needed_ ) to curl up next to Loki in their bed--and since all he felt radiating back from Kurt was a sense of calm, reassurance, it appeared that might even be a possibility, some time in the near future.

J would be more than capable of handling the rest.

“Walk with me, talk with me, Cap,” Clint said, throwing an arm around their fearless leader’s manly shoulders. Natasha moved in on the left, as if Steve was a reluctant sheep and they were a pair of superlatively-trained border collies. Sam Wilson took up the rear guard.

“Um…?” Bruce said.

“Loki and Mr. Barnes are safely in the penthouse with _Herr_ Wagner,” J.A.R.V.I.S. informed them. _“Herr_ Wagner is presently brewing tea. I’ve taken the liberty of ordering each of you a meal from Rosenblums’ Deli, to be delivered shortly to your individual quarters. Shall I also deactivate QuinJet at this time, sir?”

“Yup, lock her down,” Tony answered, his voice cracking, even though he’d put major effort into trying not to show the hugeness of his relief.

Loki had gone home, not to some distant foreign land where Tony would have to search for him yet again in the midst of a now only-too-familiar sense of helplessness and fear. He’d gone home, which meant he still felt safe there, which also meant he trusted Tony to deal with the blow-back of this little adventure.

Tony found such thoughts beyond encouraging.

Tony arrived home at the penthouse (having paused for a couple minutes outside Bruce’s door to pick his ScienceBro’s brain about possible solutions to the current state of Avengers disunity) to find that ever-efficient Kurt had already installed Bucky Barnes in Loki’s old room, supplying him with a Coke, a plate of sandwiches and a pile of classic children’s literature in paperback. The gods only knew where Kurt had found the books, but at least, with his nose buried in a dog-eared copy of _The Arabian Nights_ , the former Winter Soldier at least appeared quiet and reasonably contented.

Downstairs, he found Loki curled up on one end of the couch, both long, blue hands wrapped around his tea mug, and various bits of Kurt (namely arms and tail) wrapped around him.

Tony stood for a moment in the open elevator (clearly, neither of his blue boys had noticed the sound of its approach), watching that knot of indigo and cerulean closeness, the way the tip of Kurt’s tail twitched now and then, and the way the perfectly sculpted muscles rose out of his skin as he held Loki tighter than tight.

He could scarcely recall Kurt losing it over anything, not since that unfortunate day in the infirmary when the Uncannily Idiotic Avengers had, like the reactionary jerkwads they could sometimes be (Tony included himself in that description, naturally), drugged his favorite mutant into oblivion in a moment of pure, panic-fueled, misreading-of-the-situation. Nonetheless, Tony realized, Kurt was close to losing it now. Throughout the entire journey, he’d been unfailingly chipper, helpful and resourceful. But now, at home…

Now, at home, Tony could feel the hours of fear and uncertainty just leaking out of him. Kurt might be superior to the average man, but he was still human. He’d lived through the same difficult last few days as the rest of them--and right now, he realized, it wasn’t so much Kurt comforting Loki that he happened to be silently observing, as it was Loki comforting Kurt.

Tony shut his eyes, allowing their quiet voices to wash over him, and warm him, until the chime of the doorbell interrupted the moment.

He watched Kurt pull away from Loki, clearly intending to take care of things, the way he always took care of things.

"It's okay," Tony called out instead. “Relax, Kurt. I’ve got it.”

“Ah. Tony, I hadn't realized…” Kurt began, then left it at that—not embarrassed, as such, but probably as close to the end of his rope, emotionally-speaking, as Tony had ever seen him. 

About a minute and a half later, after Tony had accepted their giant bag of food from the hands of Mr. Poppin' Fresh the Younger, Kurt picked up both himself and his takeout, made his polite and perfectly plausible excuses for leaving, and bamfed off to the privacy of his own room.

“Kurt is very tired,” Loki said, investing a wealth of meaning into the last word. He opened the lid of the first of a fairly impressive stack of recycled-paper takeout boxes. Inside lay the concoction that appeared on the Rosenblums' menu as a "Denver Omelet NYC," featuring their home-cured pastrami as the star of the show, instead of the more usual ham.  It was an omelet of epic proportions, served with a small mountain of hash browns to the side, and Loki tucked into its gooey goodness with the relish of someone who hadn't eaten a morsel in weeks, rather than a guy who'd devoured his own body-weight in Pop Tarts maybe an hour before.

"Ah," Loki interrupted himself suddenly, one slender hand hovering in front of his mouth as he finished chewing and swallowing. "It is unseemly, to begin so, without waiting for you. It is unseemly, also, to eat so... so rapidly, and so much. Excuse me, please, Tony. I've only now remembered my manners." He teased a strip or two of pastrami out from the edge of the omelet with his fingertips and popped them in his mouth, hardly even seeming aware of what he was doing.  Manners be damned.  His body demanded to be fed.

As if to combat this, Loki set his biodegradable, earth-friendly disposable fork, deliberately, on the edge of the box, shutting down the lid.

"Kurt flew the... craft?" He glanced up at Tony, clearly hoping he'd offer the right word.

Loki liked to be precise about such things.

"The QuinJet.  Yeah," Tony supplied.

"Of course. The QuinJet. Kurt flew the QuinJet all night. He truly is very tired, Tony."

"And also very tactful," Tony said, studying his honey's face. Loki looked, for lack of a better adjective, ravaged: haunted and exhausted, and as if he was only managing to hold himself together by a funny Lokiesque combination of stubbornness and proper manners. Deep blue, almost purple, shadows lay beneath his eyes and under his cheekbones, and now that he'd lost the ratty brown sweater, Tony could make out the lines of his ribs through his t-shirt.

He also appeared painfully young, younger than Tony had ever seen him.

"Oh, babe," he breathed.

"I didn't kill those men," Loki muttered in the general direction of his takeout boxes, glaring as if they'd offended him deeply. "I didn't."

Tony took a seat beside him on the sofa--not too close, because he had no desire to spook Loki again, not when he was feeling so fragile--but not too far away. The last thing he wanted was to seem distant.

"Eat up, babe," he said quietly. "Don't want your food to get cold, right?"

"I," Loki informed him, "Am taking, as you might term it, 'a breather.'"

"A breather, huh?"

Loki scooted closer. His fingers, as they curled around Tony's hand, felt both chilled and a little tremulous. He bowed his head, chin to sternum, the spiral of his right horn hiding the better part of his face and, along with that, most of Loki's expression.

Tony didn't want them to be back to that, to the place where Loki thought he needed to hide what he felt, often for reasons that went beyond either of their understandings. He especially didn't want Loki to hide from him.

Not from him. Not ever.

"Those Hydra goons, Lok--let's be honest--I wouldn't particularly have minded if you chopped them into blood sausage, the same way your brother did."

Loki paled another shade or two, gulping convulsively. Tony laid their joined hands over his newly even-more-concave-than-usual belly, rubbing gently, encouraged by the way Loki's head drooped over onto his shoulder (carefully, because of the horn), and his muscles began to release a little of their tension.

"That's it, that's it, my baby, let it go," Tony crooned. "You're safe. You're home."

"I warded James's room," Loki informed him. "He feels safe here as well, and will cause, I truly believe, harm to no one."

"My clever Loki." Tony drew him closer, glad to feel--to literally feel--the barriers between them dropping one by one, his love growing increasingly sleepy and boneless under his touch.

"Whatever you needed to do, that would be the right thing. Kurt told me all about what happened, but I never doubted you, babe. Not even for an instant."

A little of the tension snapped back again. Loki's head raised. "Did you not? Not even for the briefest beat of time?" His eyes glowed, green and fiery, and though Tony never intended to find that frightening, he had to admit he did, just a little.

He didn't know how to answer the question Loki was really asking, which was clearly, _How can you trust me? How can you say those words, when you know--far better than I do--what I have been?_

Soon enough, though, the look faded, Loki clearly too exhausted to maintain that kind of intensity in the long term.

Tony could empathize. He felt exhausted himself, despite his own only-too-brief nap in the copilot’s seat, and he hadn't opened any inter-dimensional portals, or shoved an enemy army through them. He also wasn't growing a tiny goddess inside him.

No wonder Loki felt drained.

The two of them more or less oozed down onto the couch, somehow making room for one another, scooting in minute increments until Tony lay on his side with his own back to the back sofa-cushions, with Loki smooshed up against him. It wasn't exactly comfortable, but it wasn't quite uncomfortable, either, even with Loki's ridiculously long arms and legs, his horns and lumpy bones. A kind of comfort came to them just from being together, from the feeling of Loki's soft, cool, smooth skin pressed against Tony's skin, from the tumble of Loki's curls, silken and, for now, smelling slightly of smoke.

“I know you're tired, baby,” Tony said, surprised to hear the hoarseness in his own voice, “Just close your eyes and let me hold you.”

“I should..." Loki's hand waved vaguely in the direction of the take-out boxes. Tony knew what he meant. Already depleted, Loki really did need to eat. He already felt sick, weak, drained, and if he didn't refuel now, he'd feel worse. Still, he didn't pull away, only lay in Tony's arms, his face pressed to Tony's chest.

After about a minute, Loki added, sounding uncharacteristically shy, “I was hungry the whole while. However, I wasn’t frightened, not until the end. James was very kind to me, Tony. He is, though…” Loki’s hand, again, waved in the air, a brief, vague gesture in tune with his next words. “Terribly lost, and hurt, inside his head. Will your Captain of America be angry if he isn’t remembered?”

“Angry? Steve?” Tony found himself brushing back Loki’s curls with his fingers, burying his nose deep into the dark, fiery smell. “Nah. Wouldn’t think so. Not really. He's just confused too, but he'll come around. Eventually.”

“I did as he asked,” Loki said, his voice muffled in the folds of Tony's undersuit. “I brought James back to him. Only James is James. I know not how much of Bucky is left in him.”

“You know not?” Tony teased, hating for Loki to sound as sad as he currently sounded, or as defeated, when the truth was, he'd done so well, so beautifully, handled the whole business better than anyone might have reasonably expected.

“I don’t know, then,” Loki amended, raising his head so that Tony could see his face again. The corners of his mouth quirked upward as he mimicked Tony’s American vowels, so much flatter and plainer than Loki's own. “He held words inside his head. Words in the language of Natasha. I broke them, and, in breaking them, broke the spell.”

Tony considered. “I guess it was,” he finally said. “A spell, I mean. Though we call it brainwashing.”

“James’s brain was not washed,” Loki chided. “It was made dirty, filled up with the dark men’s evil intent. What is Hydra?”

“A bunch of Nazi idiots. Kinda the anti-S.H.I.E.L.D., I guess.”

“Yet you hold little trust for this S.H.I.E.L.D. Although you do like Philip, boyfriend of Clint. He you call ‘Director.’”

“It’s kind of an old joke between Phil ‘n’ me,” Tony explained. “When he was a lowly agent, like Nat and Clint, I called him “Agent.”

“In the time of time of the man of fury.”

“Nick Fury,” Tony corrected. “The previous director.”

“Who knows of me,” Loki said, with some certainty. “When I speak of him, you imagine White Loki in a great, unbreakable casket of glass, and the flavor is bitter.”

“You might say there’s history,” Tony answered.

“Indeed.” Loki sat up suddenly, flipped back the lid of the top box, made a face and shut it again. "I can't eat that. It's coagulated."

Tony laughed. He couldn't help himself.

Loki set the first box aside and opened the second, which appeared to hold a largish pile of buttered toast, which he hunched over, munching triangle after triangle with an air of mournful martyrdom.

"You don't have to," Tony told him. "J can order something else. If you wanted, I could even make you fresh toast in our very own kitchen."

"I wouldn't put you through the trouble," Loki said, in an odd, slightly rebuking, tone of voice that left Tony wondering what he had--or hadn't--done, what he'd said or hadn't said.

"I'm sorry," he told Loki, though he wasn't sure why.

"She's well, our small singer," Loki told him.

 _Oh. **That,**_ Tony thought. He'd assumed, given Loki's still weirder-than-usual eating habits, that nothing had changed on the baby front, but still, he hadn't asked.

He'd thought, but he hadn't asked.

"I should said something. Anything," he told Loki. "I know. I'm an idiot. We're just operating a little out of my areas of expertise. Out of all of them, in fact. But I still should have asked."

"It isn't..." Loki's hand moved in one of his familiar gestures, the one that seemed to encompass everything and nothing. “No,Tony, I haven't meant... I didn't mean..."

A single fat tear, tinted faintly green, dripped into his box of toast, and Loki closed the lid on it abruptly, as if by doing so he could also shut away whatever grief or sorrow he felt in that moment.

"Tony, you see..." he began, cleared his throat and tried again, the words coming out in the softest of whispers. "Tony, you see... I have discovered..."

Tony waited, half afraid of what might follow.

"I _am_ White Loki,” he said, flat-voiced, still almost too softly for Tony to hear. “That’s a thing I realize now. And what I make... What I am...”

Tony continued to wait, less sure than ever of what he ought to say in return.

“Babe…?” he tried, finally.

“James was a good man, made a stranger to himself and forced into a life of villainy. I am not a man at all, or of the _Aes_ , like my brother, or even, truly, of the _Jötnar_ , whatever my appearance. In truth, I understand little of this, or even what it means to be myself. I don't know if, in the heart of my heart, I am a good or an evil thing. Is my nature pure, or is it tainted? Will I, in the end, corrupt everything I make? Tony, what if no good can come of me? What if even our lovely small singer is, in her heart, only a deceiver, because the substance of what she is has come from me?"

"Uh, Lok..." Tony tried to cut in, because his honey was shaking, his eyes now literally glowing, as if some weird green fire had blazed to life inside Loki's head, and now burned wild.

"Loki Silvertongue," he spat. "Loki the Liar, Loki the Deceiver, the god of chaos and mischief and misrule in all things..." Loki ground to a halt, breathing hard, so pale that Tony would have stated, with close to a 99.9 per cent certainty, that his honey was about to either faint or lose his breakfast.

After about a minute, though, Loki appeared to overcome the feeling.

More or less.

He continued, in a flat, soft, lifeless voice, "There is a man, Tony. A scientist, known to Thor, my brother. I believe he holds our—that is to say, my—memories within him, placed there by White… that is, by me, in earlier times. I wonder, should I seek out this man? Should I claim all I've forgotten, recover my magical training for the safety of those around me? If I own my past misdeeds, which I know were grievous, would I prevent further wrongs, or propel myself again into evil? Ought I to be punished, as your Steven, Captain of America, believes?”

 _I am both too old and too tired for this_ , Tony thought--except he knew those words were only the last gasp of his former self, the self-involved, way-too-fucked-up-for-his-own-good-or-anyone-else's Tony. The Tony who'd taken the love of a amazing woman like Pepper, and just dragged it endlessly through the dirt.

The unapproachable Tony, turned in on himself, made up of nothing but invention, loneliness, and pain.

“Baby," he began, his own voice quiet too, though it seemed to carry in a way Loki's hadn't. "I think I heard at least a couple ‘shoulds’ and an ‘ought’ in there, but not a single want. Honestly, baby, do you _want_ to do those things? Would they improve your life? Would they make you feel better? Is any of that something you _need_ to feel?”

“At times, Tony, I feel drenched in darkness.” Loki sank back into the couch, arms wrapped around himself as if holding in as deep, deep ache, a wound that couldn't ever be healed. "I feel without worth, and endlessly afraid. Also, James owned a small book of the histories of the gods of the Northmen, and I..." He ground to a halt, a second, single pale-green tear trailing crookedly down his cheek.

Loki resisted, at first, when Tony reached for him, then all at once gave in, laying his head in Tony's lap, his face pressed hard into Tony’s belly.

“In the end, I want none of it." Loki sighed, his breath warm even through the insulated fabric of the undersuit. "I would help Thor’s friend, Dr. Selvig, if he is in need. If ever my memories burdened him unduly, I would help--but the truth is, just now, I want none of them for myself."

"I think that's your answer right there, Lok," Tony told him. "You know--about the whole good versus evil thing? Consider this: your first freakin' impulse is to do the right thing, to help someone you might have hurt. Gotta say, that's hardly one from the supervillain handbook."

"Does such a book exist?" Loki asked, clearly intrigued.

Tony laughed. "If it does, they never shared it with me."

Loki sighed again, but this time it sounded less tragic, more contented. "Kurt, I believe, might accuse me of overthinking."

"Yup, he just might."

"When I say I am White Loki, my beloved, though I know the words to be true, I also know myself to be _other_ , to be changed, to have pieces missing, all memories aside, of what allowed me to be as he was. And even as I say these words, I make no sense to myself. Do I make the least sense to you, Tony, or do I seem, as I often seem to myself, senseless and irrational?”

“You seem…” Tony ran his fingers through the thick, dark curls spilled across his knees. It hardly seemed possible, but Loki’s hair, already long even before his departure, seemed to have grown about another six inches in the intervening days. “You seem lovable, and adorable, and thoughtful, and like you’ve already been through too damn much this year, my baby--especially for a year that's so new. You’re tired, drained, you haven’t been getting enough to eat. How ‘bout, just for now, we don’t worry about anything? Because, speaking only for myself, I squeezed about a decade’s worth of worry into the past week. How about we just be?”

Loki’s long fingers wove between his again, Loki’s face pressed in even harder than it had been pressing (and yes, those horn cozies definitely needed to be a thing).

“It is good,” Loki’s muffled voice hummed against his stomach, “To care for others, as I cared for James. But it’s also good to be cared for, as I am here, so kindly, and so lovingly. I should call Athena soon," he added, "And good Mr. Tobit, who will almost certainly be worried."

With those words, Loki snuggled in a little closer, dropping instantly off to sleep, while Tony, more awake than he'd felt in hours, reached behind him for the throw, draping it around Loki's shoulders, raising his Loki's head gently to slide a pillow underneath. Loki looked peaceful now, asleep, as if all those terrible, self-hating words had never been, as if by saying them, he'd banished those feelings far away, at least as far away as he'd sent the Hydra goons.

"He's peaceful," J said quietly, from the speaker just above Tony's head. "That's good. I also worried, you know."

"Actually, I do know," Tony answered. "And how goes it now, my faithful friend?"

"Everyone's sleeping," the AI answered. "Only you and I are awake."

"Just like old times, huh?"

"As you say," J.A.R.V.I.S. responded, a touch of starchy amusement in his voice.

They both knew, really, that everything had changed.

"He'll be okay, though, right? This was all, I dunno, hormones and stress and too much... Just too much. But he'll be okay?"

"If I may say so, sir, caring becomes you."

"'Sir,' still, J? Really?"

"Anthony."

"Tony, maybe?"

"Anthony," J responded firmly. His voice, when he continued, reminded Tony, almost achingly, of the good, kind, formal old man, of the Jarvis who had been. "If he is not 'okay,' as you put it, all at once, then you'll make sure that he will be, in time."

"Hey, you better be careful, J," Tony joked, though his eyes had damn near started prickling again. "That almost sounded like a vote of confidence. From you, of all people!"

The AI gave a quiet laugh, so much, again, like the laugh of the man who'd been the only one to care for him, for so many years, it shot a dart of pain into Tony's heart sharper and truer to its mark than any arrow Clint had ever thought of firing. He pulled in a long, shaky breath, one hand pressed to his chest, the other clutched in Loki's hair.

"I've always had faith in you, Anthony," J added, his voice perfectly that other Jarvis's voice. "Even when you had no faith in yourself."

"Always?" Tony asked, his voice hoarse and shaky, and far, far younger than it should have been.

"Always," J repeated firmly.

And who was Tony to disagree with him?


	4. Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony finds unexpected guests at the breakfast table. Loki has made plans to keep Bucky safe (and, if necessary, to keep the residents of Avengers Tower safe from Bucky).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title comes from an odd little bit of American idiom, one that has little to do with awakening, or the smelling of fragrant hot beverages. If someone in the U.S. tells you to "wake up and smell the coffee," they're really advising you to face up to the realities of a situation, however unpleasant it might be.
> 
> "hit the hay"=go to bed In olden days, when mattresses were big sacks full of actual hay, people would literally "hit the hay" to redistribute the mattress stuffing and drive out bugs or other pests.
> 
>  _Romper Room_ was a TV program for preschoolers that ran from 1956 to 1994 (its peak of popularity seems to have been in the late 50's through mid-60's). The show's mascot was Mr. Do-Bee (an actor costumed as a giant bee), who visited each episode to teach the children proper bee-havior, as in "Do Bee good boys and girls for your parents!" His evil twin, Mr. Don't Bee, on the other hand, showed the kids exactly what they shouldn't do. Hence, Tony's little song.
> 
> There's probably an official name for scrambled eggs with shredded cheese stirred into them, but in my family they're known as "cheesy-scramble."
> 
> Sabbath, AC/DC and Led Zep=Black Sabbath, AC/DC and Led Zeppelin, premiere "hard rock" bands of Tony's (and my) youth.
> 
> 'do=hairdo
> 
> Anthracite is an extra-hard type of coal. It contains relatively pure carbon and burns with minimal smoke and flame.
> 
> A "stogie" is a long, thin, cheap cigar. A bratwurst is a German sausage, generally larger in size than a U.S. hot dog.
> 
> To "give someone the eye" means to look at them with romantic interest, though in this case, Clint is clearly doing so with intent to mock.

* * *

“Sir,” J.A.R.V.I.S. said in his ear, when Tony had just barely (kinda-sorta) entered the early stages of what might eventually lead to hauling his way out of sleep.

“Nggh,” Tony replied. He thought he might have felt his toes twitch. Maybe. His eyes sure as hell showed no particular intention to open. His mouth tasted like used gym socks.

“Anthony,” the A.I. added, volume significantly cranked up and with an extra degree of pseudo-British starchiness to make up for actually having used Tony’s given name. “The family are now at breakfast. Would you care to join them?”

The sudden burst of loudness made Tony startle violently, to the point that he flailed Loki's water glass straight off the nightstand, cursing himself for having totally forgotten to take out his ear bee before hitting the hay (the weirdness of that particular sentence making him flash back to that odd little _Romper Room_ song he'd heard nearly every day, way back when he was a very small person:

 _Do be a doo bee_  
_Don’t be a don’t bee…”_

What the hell did that even mean?

He flopped back on the bed like a recently-landed salmon, as J.A.R.V.I.S. pretended not to snicker discretely.

“Sir?” the A.I. eventually tried again, his tone still an irritating combination of insistent and amused—or at least it would have been irritating if Tony hadn’t been too busy falling back into sleep to pay much attention.

 _Tired_ , Tony thought. _Too tired_. _Go away, J.  Must Sleep._

“SIR!” the A.I. bellowed in his ear, at eardrum-lacerating volume, some indefinite amount of time later. Ears ringing, and fully aware that his positronic pal had by no means reached the limits of his noise-making capabilities, Tony floundered up again, emitting a series of incoherent dolphin-with-a-drinking-habit sounds as he hauled himself out of bed.

“Arrangements have been made to safeguard Mr. Barnes,” J continued pleasantly, as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Or would melt. However that saying went.

“Mr. Wagner and I thought you might wish to approve those plans. Also, Ms. Matilda will arrive shortly to convey Loki to school.”

Tony grumbled something incoherent, lurched more or less to his feet and staggered to the bathroom, where he pissed at some length, then spent what seemed like an hour or two in the shower, getting clean and waiting for at least a few of his faculties to kick in again.

He didn’t want to miss saying goodbye—he really didn’t—he just felt so drained, sucked dry by days of worrying, searching, flying… and then more worrying.

“What the hell time is it anyway?” Tony asked, when he finally emerged, his voice slightly towel-muffled as he attempted to multitask by talking and drying his hair at the same time, but reasonably upright and coherent.

“A quarter ‘til nine,” J.A.R.V.I.S. answered primly. “Late. Loki has delayed his departure in order to bid you farewell. Also, if you’ll recall, you have a meeting.”

“Blarg,” Tony said. “Don’t remind me. It’s too early in the day for Steve.”

He dropped the towel on the floor, belted a robe over his boxers and managed to make it to the lower level without falling down the stairs. He regarded that as something of an achievement, all things considered.

Yay him.

“The Family,” it now seemed, consisted of Loki and Kurt (as expected), the aforementioned Ms. Matilda (smiling and crisply-uniformed), and—as completely not expected, Clint and Phil. Phil (who still sported a lump the size of a duck egg on his mostly-bald head, and a slightly glazed-over look in his eyes), appeared to be doing a spot of debriefing over the cheesy-scramble and toast.

The family did _not_ include, at that moment, a certain Winter Soldier. For all Tony knew, the guy was huddled in his guest room, plotting their mutual demise and sorting through his various personalities in much the same way Tony had, in his youth, sorted through his extensive vinyl collection, only with “Confused,” “More Confused” and “Murderous” in place of Sabbath, AC/DC and Led Zep.

“He is not!” Loki insisted, not only having clearly overheard the thought, but just as clearly inclined to leap to the defense of his new good buddy. “James is eating peanut butter from the jar with a spoon and reading from _The Arabian Nights_!”

Someone laughed at that—a creepy, _heh heh heh, I-am-up-to-no-good_ , low-pitched rumble of a laugh.

Tony recognized that laugh, just as he recognized the muscular guy in cowboy attire lounging at his table, even though the last time they’d met his unexpected guest had been masked, and wearing leather and spandex. . “Threatening” didn’t even begin to describe the not-exactly-subtle air of menace that hung over him like a particularly threatening stormcloud, and--suited up (or not, as was currently the case)-- his hair stood up on his head in two stiff points highly reminiscent of wolf ears.

Not for the first time, Tony couldn’t help but wonder if that particular ‘do just happened, or if it was something its owner cultivated. If so, how long did it take to achieve that particular level of immovable pointiness?

“Wolverine,” Tony deadpanned.

“Tony, you remember Logan, my… ah… friend?” Kurt asked, polite as always, though his normally sunny smile appeared slightly less bright  than usual. Tony understood his German bud’s dilemma. He knew full well that that that particular gentleman—to use the term in the loosest possible sense--happened to be Kurt’s long-term boyfriend, yet to introduce him as such would have been impossible. The words simply wouldn’t stick. Everything about James Howlett, aka Logan, argued against him ever having been a boy in any way, shape or form, as if he’d emerged from some cave in the woods, fully-formed, at age forty, and just stuck that way.

“Uh… yeah,” Tony said.

“Stark.” Logan’s eyes turned on him, cold and hard as anthracite, or the coldest, hardest, darkest water frozen solid in the depths of a glacier, or some other supremely cold, hard thing. Weirdly, though he’d met the man on more than one occasion, Tony never could recall afterwards exactly what color those eyes might be. Blue? Brown? Black? Tony didn’t have a clue.

“ _Ach_ , you’re impossible!” Kurt exclaimed, smacking Logan on the back of his head with the plushy blue tip of his tail. “Stop intimidating my friends!”

Logan laughed again--a different low, rumbling sound, one that might have come from somewhere deep beneath the city, possibly from a series of mysterious subterranean tunnels that ran far beneath the subway lines.

“Logan has arrived to keep James company today,” Loki announced cheerfully.

 _James?_ Tony wondered, momentarily confused.

“James Barnes,” Loki clarified. “For Logan is Logan, and I will not refer to my newly-acquired friend as ‘Bucky,’ for that is a foolish name.

" _Bucky_ ,” he repeated, with a certain air of amused contempt. “Still, isn’t it fitting that Logan come here to help? Because they are both James, I mean. Or ought I to have said ‘Jameses?’”

Logan laughed yet again, but this one had a slightly indulgent, uncle-ish quality to it, and the man’s cold, dark eyes warmed to something almost like kindness as he gazed at Loki. “Don’t ya worry about today, kiddo,” he said. “No shit-storms on my watch.”

“I trust you entirely,” Loki assured him, even more cheerfully.

Something, Tony noticed, lurked beneath the air of cheerfulness, though.  Loki's eyes seemed a darker green than usual, tired and troubled. Under those eyes lay indigo shadows dark as bruises, but otherwise he looked so pale his skin seemed no more blue than that of a slightly chilly human.

Loki appeared to ponder Logan's words. “A storm of… ah, shit… would be extremely unpleasant, Logan," he commented at last. "How glad I am that you’re able to prevent one from occurring!”

All at once it hit Tony over the head--Loki had set all this up, not Kurt at all, as had been his first guess. Loki wanted someone deadly enough to protect his bewildered-but-potentially-deadly new friend, but also someone who could protect the rest of them from Barnes, if worst came to worst.

And Loki (this also came through clear as glass) still didn’t trust Steve. Not without reason.

 _All will be well_ , Loki spoke up suddenly in Tony’s head, even his mental voice sounding tired, and slightly forlorn. _However, Tony, you must--most assuredly--impress upon Captain Rogers that James is not a thing to be owned by him, whatever their past association, but a being of free will. And that for now, by that free will, he desires to be here with us, and to live within my old room, and to not be troubled. Oh, and also, when I have returned, you must—if you will—perform your magic of repair upon his arm of metal, for it makes a most annoying sound of “zzzt, zzzt”, which I can perceive even from down here, and it sets my nerves upon their edges._

“You got it,” Tony answered aloud, and Loki bent over to kiss him, draping his long, thin body around Tony’s shorter, stockier form, as if that would somehow allow him to draw from a much-needed source of energy.

“Take care, okay, babe?” Tony told him.

“Oh, most certainly, I will,” Loki answered. He flashed a sunny smile, pilfered a piece of Clint’s toast right off his plate, grabbed his portfolio and, following Ms. Matilda, sauntered out the door, humming what sounded like a piece of “ _Bohemian Rhapsody_ ”—the “ _Scaramouche, Scaramouche_ ” bit, in point of fact.

“Brave kid,” Logan commented.

Tony met his cold, cold eyes. “Loki is that,” he agreed.

“I like him,” Logan added. “Wasn’t sure I would. Kid smells weird, but right. Tells me all I need to know.”

Kurt’s tail twined around his significant other's (nope, not boyfriend, _definitely_ not boyfriend) shoulders, slowly this time, sinuously, and Logan gave the tip a brief, affectionate squeeze. “Get to school, Fuzzy,” he said. “I’ll handle clean-up duties.”

Tony didn’t think he meant just the dishes. Clearly Logan was On Duty, and took the job seriously.

Kurt asked him something quietly, in German, that his partner answered with a chilly-eyed grin. “No worries, Elf. I got it covered.”

“Which is our cue to depart, I believe.” Phil shot Logan a look as he pushed back from the table. “Since Mr. Howlett, as he says, has things covered here.”

Logan pulled a stogie the length of a bratwurst out of the pocket of his denim jacket, sniffed it, rolled it a time or two in his fingers and lit up. “Yup,” was his only response. That, and the hellish cloud of smoke billowing around his head.

Tony didn’t even think to object, even given that the entire penthouse would probably end up smelling of foul cigar fumes to the end of his days. How could he? This was Wolverine. _The_ Wolverine, some might say.

Clint snickered at Tony on the way to the elevator. “Your face!” he exclaimed, as the doors whooshed shut in front of them. “Plus, you know…” He gestured, giving Tony the eye (in the most insincere and--possibly--sarcastic way) from head to toe. “So, bathrobes are now appropriate meeting attire? ‘Cause if I’d known, I woulda…”

“You would _not_ ,” Phil interrupted, with emphasis. Phil had his standards, even if Clint didn't.

“Yeah, well,” Tony answered, which totally wasn’t a defense.

Truth was, Wolverine kinda scared the crap out of him, and he could no more have told the man, “Thank you for not smoking” than he could have defeated him in unarmed one-on-one combat. It just wasn’t in the picture. For one thing, Logan wasn’t ever really, unarmed, was he?--not with those claws lurking just beneath his skin. Neither was Logan someone to be defeated with a solid knowledge of physics. He was a force of nature, powerful and chaotic, and maybe that’s what messed Tony up the most—everything he himself was, everything he believed in, had always been based on things acting the way they were supposed to act.

 _And that’s why you’re madly in love with an ancient Norse god of chaos with a fucked up memory?_ asked the voice in his head, sounding strangely like J.A.R.V.I.S.’s voice, when J was both at his most snarky and his most sympathetic, a combination that happened more often than one might expect.

“Opposites attract,” Tony said out loud.

Phil and Clint shot him twin funny looks.


	5. Complications

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a meeting turns dysfunctional, a big brother's concern becomes irksome, and a certain god feels less than than mischievous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eggos are round, pre-cooked frozen waffles meant to be toasted before eating. They come in various flavors--Whole Grain, Buttermilk, Blueberry, etc.).
> 
> J.A.R.V.I.S. would no doubt inform Tony the the saying "butter wouldn't melt in his mouth" was already well known in 1546, when it first appeared in print (along with many other sayings we still use today, albeit in a modernized form) in _The Proverbs of John Heywood_. The insinuation is that the one in whose mouth butter wouldn't melt is either completely innocent, or is so good at deception he doesn't even heat up enough in the midst of his lies to melt butter.
> 
> Clarified butter is made by gently heating whole butter until it melts and the milk solids and water separate from the butterfat.
> 
> Although (as far as I know) "Bring Your Viking to Work Day" isn't a thing, many employers do have "Bring Your Child" or "Bring Your Daughter to Work" days to allow children can get a taste of what their parents do all day at the office.

* * *

“Tony, are you really, seriously…?” Natasha gazed at Tony over the rim of her coffee cup, an expression of stony incredulity (with maybe—maybe--the slightest accompanying flourish of mockery) on her face. “Attending an official meeting dressed only in your bathrobe?”

“And boxers,” Tony clarified.  He slumped into his usual seat at the conference table—the goddamned equally-official conference table, not the Avengers Central dining table. For a morning meeting, no less, and with not so much as a still-frozen Whole Grain Eggo in sight, much less the usual full breakfast, home-cooked by the caring hands of Captain America himself.

"It's my nice bathrobe," he added, apropos of nothing in particular. "Give me points for that, at least?"

If Natasha had ever allowed herself something so obvious and dramatic as an eye-roll, Tony felt fairly certain she'd have shot him one in that moment. He paid just a little more attention to arranging the hem of said bathrobe over his knees than would normally have been the case in a more casual setting.

“Just thought I’d make that clear. About the boxers," Tony went on (fairly certain, at the same time, that he should just shut the hell up already). "In case of unintentional manspreading.”

“Manspreading?” Steve repeated faintly. He looked wrecked, as if he’d been simultaneously been possessed by the vengeful spirit of the sad-but-plucky little waif he’d been slightly less than a century before, happened to be suffering from a hangover of the most epic proportions, and had been deprived of sleep for three solid weeks.

He hadn’t bothered with the spangle-suit. Or with combing his hair. Or even with shaving, and Tony had to admit he found the sight of Cap with morning stubble fairly disconcerting. Steve's usual civvie uniform of plaid shirt tucked firmly into khakis not only hadn’t felt the loving caress of a piping-hot iron that morning, but half the shirttail hung out over his belt.

“I believe it might be called a ‘bathrobe of protest,’” Phil put in. “Dry” didn’t begin to describe his tone. Not even “arid” came close.

“Hey, at least I showed,” Tony said, “And, for that matter, showered.”

Normally squeaky-clean Steve, along with everything else, appeared to have passed on that little nicety. As for showing up, a quick glance down the table at the assembled company revealing a conspicuous gap, a gap usually filled by someone big, blonde and quasi-Nordic.

 _Thor is just now hovering conspicuously above Ms. Matilda’s car,_ Loki’s voice announced inside Tony's head at that very moment, sounding both wan and distinctly peeved. _I’ve explained that this is not only unnecessary, but also somewhat embarrassing, and yet he persists, and is contrary, and will not listen._

 _Pretend it’s “take your Viking to work day,” babe,_ Tony suggested (he tried not to react in any way to Loki’s internal wondering of, _Is there such a thing?_ ) _Better yet, put your brother to work. Tell the class he’s their life model for the day, and command Thor to take off all his clothes. It’ll confuse your brother, and make your students either insanely jealous or  supremely grateful._

 _Thor **is** comely_ , Loki responded, a slightly pensive tone to his thoughts--seconds later, though, his laughter created a ripple of warmth inside Tony's head. A warmth mixed with, maybe, just a note or two of evil).

 _As always, beloved_ , he told Tony, _You are clever. You fill me brimful with love and mirth._

 _Which are good things,_ Loki added hastily.

 _Never doubted it for an instant_ , Tony told him. _Love you bunches, Lok_.

 _And I, also…_ A slight hesitation followed. _In perpetually greater bunches_.

With that, Loki signed off, and Tony found himself missing the contact—almost aching for it, no matter how he tried to remind himself that: A) he was a grown-ass man, and B) Loki would be back home, safe and sound, in only a few more hours.

“Thor’s not going to be joining us,” he said aloud to the Avengers assembled. “He’s taking a family day, guard-dogging his brother to school.”

“That might not…” Phil began, before clearly thinking better of whatever it was he’d meant to say.

“Y’know…” Clint gave his boyfriend a look—not exactly the “stink-eye,” but not exactly not, either. “If you’re gonna fib to us, Philly, even by omission, the very least you could do is dress up in a big leather coat and an eye-patch.”

J.A.R.V.I.S. wasn’t the only one for whom butter wouldn’t melt (or would—Tony really was going to have to ask J to clarify that one for him, no clarified butter jokes intended). Phil’s perfectly bland look of _“hear no evil, speak no evil_ ” almost made Tony want to punch him.

“Nope.” Clint clearly wasn't having it, whatever "it" might be. “Uh-unh. Nope. Fess up, Phil.”

“I only meant,” Phil continued to non-clarify, “That a little increased security around Loki, for the present time, might not be entirely unwise.”

“Because why?” Tony asked. “Momentarily putting aside the whole ‘cause he wiped out 9/10ths of Hydra with the glowing green hula hoops of doom’ part of the equation.”

“Maybe because he failed to wipe out 1/10th of Hydra—“ The corners of Nat’s mouth quirked upward, though only the smallest part of that seemed to be with amusement, “Using those glowing green hula hoops of doom. He also made off with what they, for some time now, have regarded as a valuable asset. And also because they have no idea who—or what—Loki really is.”

“What she said,” Phil put in.

“They had his damn scepter,” Tony growled, his mouth so dry he felt as if he had rocks in his mouth. “They have to know…”

“They know about _that_ Loki. Sceptre Loki. White Loki, as your Loki might say.” Bruce was using his gentle, bedside manner voice, the one that Tony now and then found (much as he loved his ScienceBro) tended to tip his personal scales a little closer to the “Irritated” side of the balance than it did toward the side of “Soothed.”

“ _Our_ Loki…” Bruce continued (and Tony found that his best friend’s swap of “your” for “our” made him instantly willing to forgive the voice, however annoying). “Our Loki is very much an unknown quality. If we, who know him, haven’t yet been able to guess at the extent of his talents, Hydra—to whom he probably seems to have come out of nowhere…” Bruce blinked a couple times, obviously feeling a little delicate about continuing down that particular train of thought, and looking, along with that, even more earnest and professorish than usual.

“They’ll want to know more,” added Natasha, who clearly felt no delicacy whatsoever about voicing what Tony, not to mention the rest of the team (plus Phil) had to be thinking.

“Or make…” And here Phil at least had the decency to look faintly sheepish. “More, um, permanent arrangements.”

“Nope. Not happening. I won’t let them,” Tony said. His voice came out strangled, barely audible. “I won’t, guys. I just… I won’t.”

“Tone,” Bruce put in, his warm, square hand moving to Tony’s wrist, delivering a comforting little squeeze. Clearly he'd been taking lessons from Kurt. “None of us will. You know that. None of us will.”

Clint set down his coffee cup just a touch too robustly--it clanked loudly on the tabletop, a miniature tsunami of milky coffee sloshing up over the rim.

“And in aid of that..." the archer said, "Please. No more of this shit. Seriously. It’s either one for all and all for one, or it’s nothing. No more fuckery.”

Steve, eyes firmly fixed on the parquet tabletop, didn’t even bother to language him.

"By which, I imagine, Clint means no more secrets, or divided loyalties," Phil put in, calm as ever.

“We’re either a team,” Clint went on. “Or we’re not. Got it?”

“Meaning?” Phil asked, sounding more interested than he did confrontational.

“Meaning, you're right, I meant no more lies—and, yes, I’m lookin’ at you, too, babe, with all the super-secret S.H.I.E.L.D. shit. Tony hacked all your systems ages ago, y'know. He’s probably read more of the files than you have.”

 _That's what you think_ , said Phil’s mild and unremarkable face, though out loud he responded with no more than a quiet, “Okay.”

“No more playing our cards close to the vest. No more hidden agendas. No more goddamn shooting off in whatever direction before we even take time to think, or run whatever it is by the rest of the team. No more... Here he glared straight at Steve with narrowed marksman’s eyes. “Like Philly said, no more divided loyalties. And speaking of the brainwashed elephant not too far from the room…”

“Under control,” Tony answered.

“Well, that puts my mind at ease,” Clint snarked, though as he went on, he looked a lot less gimlet-eyed, a lot more apologetic. “I might also mention the... uh... unusual skills of the god... or sorcerer... or non-giant Frost Giant you have living upstairs?  I know he's a sweet kid but, _Jesus_ , Tony.  I still haven't figured out exactly what happened in Berlin."

“Loki’s fine,” Tony shot back, making a concerted effort not to snap at Clint, who'd actually (Loki aside) made some decent points.

“Green hula hoops of doom,” Natasha put in, succinctly.

“He’s fine,” Tony insisted. “He’s… goddammit, he’s _gentle_.”

“Unless provoked,” Phil said, and Tony hated, more than mere words could express, the unmistakable kindness in Director's tone at that moment. “Or perhaps I ought to say… until provoked?”

“It might be in both Sgt. Barnes and Loki’s best interests to kick the tires and take a peek under the hood, so to speak.” Bruce was using his fucking bedside-manner voice again, and giving Tony big, soft puppy-dog-eyes to go with it.

Tony seriously wanted to kick _him_ under the table. Hard. So it hurt.

Besides which, hearing Bruce (who as far as Tony knew didn’t even possess a current driver’s license) using automotive metaphors was pretty much the same as hearing Bruce discuss, basically, anything in football terms—in other words, ludicrous.

He opened his mouth to say something cutting, but not even the smallest peep came out. He felt literally (to put things in less than politically correct terms) dumbstruck. The thought of anyone studying Loki, experimenting on Loki, who’d so recently screamed in silent agony in the course of something so basic and everyday as a fucking ultrasound made his ears ring and his stomach flip over. He couldn’t. He just… couldn’t. Not even with Loki’s consent, because Loki could almost be counted on to consent to pretty much anything in order to prove himself “good” and gain approval, to be liked by those he thought well of, and who he wanted to think well of him. Not even if quantifying Loki's powers might actually be kind of a good idea.

“No.” Tony found himself on his feet and back from the table, bathrobe swishing dramatically around him, like the cloak of some melodramic villain. “And furthermore, _hell_ no. You’re not making Loki your lab rat, for his fucking ‘own good’ or not. No. Uh-unh. Not happening.”

“Tone…” Bruce began.

“Not _happening_ ,” Tony repeated, and fled the room.

* * *

At least, Loki considered, Thor had chosen to wear Midgardian clothing (even without his memories, oddly, he still found certain terms more comfortable for common use, such as “Midgardian” in place of “human” or “American”).

On a less positive note, the clothing his brother tended to choose—to exercise a phrase Tony now and then employed—also made him appear to have “been shot backwards out of a cannon.” Thor’s jeans bore rips over the knees, his sweatshirt had holes in the elbows, and his long hair, made even more disordered by the wind as he flew, had been messily twisted into that abomination known as a "man-bun."

Loki considered that he himself had looked more presentable even in his days of living upon New York’s streets—but then again, many of his fellow students dressed so, so he supposed, in truth, that he ought not to judge.

“Forgive me if I have displeased you, brother,” Thor told him, sounding gentle and contrite, as if speaking to one frail and infirm. Such a tone struck Loki, if anything, as even more irritating than Thor’s unkempt appearance, or the fact that, unwanted, he’d invited himself along.

Loki sighed. Thor _meant_ well. He always meant well, and to respond with churlishness to his well-meaning words would be unworthy of the man he wished to be. But still...

He had not, unfortunate as that might be, Kurt’s patience.  Much as he cared for his brother, sometimes Thor (as Tony might well have expressed it) annoyed the hell out of him.

He sighed again, and shifted his portfolio from one hand to the other. Turning briefly, he waved to Ms. Matilda, now in the distance, though still easily visible between the trees.

 _See, all is well, and my brother accompanies me_ , he meant by that wave.

Ms. Matilda, Loki knew, worried about him, not only in her professional capacity but because she--sweet lady--appeared to genuinely like him as a person.  Thoughts of what had formerly transpired with Captain Rogers, beneath these same trees, continued to trouble her thoughts, and Loki had no wish to cause her any additional concern. He also liked Ms. Matilda very much, and found her discourses upon the game of baseball--little as he understood them--oddly soothing.

In truth, his heart--though he missed both Mr. Tobit and Athena, his friend--wasn't in today's classes. For one thing, he worried for James, so solitary and so fragile. For another, Loki had, at last, to admit he didn’t feel at all well. In fact, he’d felt exhausted even before he’d arisen for the day, and even his delight at finding Kurt’s dear Logan already present within the penthouse had been insufficient to lift the heaviness from him.

His stomach also felt very odd—in that now-familiar way, queasy yet famished all at once—and he carried a deep dull ache low in his spine. In truth, he wanted nothing more than to curl on the sofa beneath a warm blanket, nibble on crunchy, salty things and drift in and out of sleep--to a background, perhaps, of several of the films of Mr. Disney.

Most of all, he wanted Tony to stay with him there, and not to go down to his meeting, or to the workshop with Bruce, or to the office with Pepper and Vanessa. He wanted Tony to hold him gently, as Tony would so often do, and to tell him humorous and comforting things.

 _But you **will** see Mr. Tobit today, and Athena_ , he tried to console himself. And the students. Perhaps they have missed you.

To Loki's wonder—and though he truly _did_ try not to eavesdrop upon their thoughts—the students appeared to quite like him, though some few had at first harbored apprehensions. They, of course, thought him like Kurt—and (also of course), to be like Kurt was to be delightful.

“I could carry your folio,” Thor told him, interrupting Loki’s thoughts.

“Portfolio,” he corrected absently, finding that he hadn't the strength, just then, to deliver a correct definition of the word Thor had misused. He felt proud of his brother, however, from stepping away from the comfort of the Allspeak and into the more treacherous territory of the English tongue.

“Thor, your English comes along very well,” he said. His brother blushed a little at the compliment, warm color rising high on his cheeks, making him appear even more comely than usual, were such a thing possible.

“Tony teased me that I ought to make mischief for you by instructing you to lay aside your garments, that the students might draw you so.”

“Did he?” Thor laughed. “Is such a thing done?”

“Now and then.  It is called 'life drawing.'" Loki smiled at his brother. Truly, he could not long stay irritated with Thor, who loved him so—and whom he loved in return. He could not.

"In general, though..." Loki continued. "We have them draw pieces of fruit, or other such inanimate objects. For our last class, I found one of a very interesting sort, a member of the citrus family, that looks something like the hand of a crone, though in Midgard it is called ‘Buddha’s Hand.’”

Loki set an image of the fruit in question carefully into his brother’s mind, just to see if he could easily do so, for the workings of Thor’s _Aesir_ consciousness were far different than those of the Midgardians—even those as brilliant as Tony or as damaged as James.

Thor chuckled at the image. “This is truly a thing to be eaten, and not the claw of some beast out of Niflheimr? Loki, do you not find yourself constantly amazed at the wonders of this world?”

 _Wonders?_ Loki thought.

Indeed, there were wonders, many of them, but there were also…

"Loki?" he heard his brother say, as if from far in the distance.

A stillness grew and spread within him. Dimly, he felt his heart beat faster, and Thor taking the portfolio from his hand, then laying a heavy arm round his shoulders. A chill moved inside him, despite the warmth of his brother’s embrace, starting at his fingers and toes, climbing through his limbs, filling his chest until room scarcely remained for his frantic heart to beat at all.

In that moment, Loki found himself once more lost, cast adrift in Berlin, where he was neither loved, nor even known by any except James.

Green fire flamed, and the door to the... other... place opened, extending its terrible, inexorable pull.

_Men of violence. Men who have done wrong. Men who have betrayed their own kind… Begone!_

But, oh, the fear... Oh, the terror...

Men who might have described themselves as without the least sense of apprehension, guilt or remorse cried out in anguish, some soiling themselves as they were ripped away from the only world they’d ever known, into a place without hope, where there could never be mercy, or peace, or an end to torment.

 _Do you deserve better, Loki?_ asked a cold voice inside his head. _Or is this what you have also rightly earned with your foul deeds?_

Loki stumbled, half falling against one of the tall thin trees. He wasn't in Berlin, he knew he was not. This was Brooklyn, This was home and safety and all things familiar, so far as anything was familiar to him in these confusing days.

He attempted to catch his balance, wrapping one arm around the slender trunk, only to find his stomach convulsing, depositing the remains of his breakfast onto the mossy earth between the toes of his boots, the sudden violence of the moment forcing tears from his eyes.

Even after, he remained so, clinging to this support, unable to stand alone, scarcely even able to feel the warmth of Thor’s hand spread across his back.

Later--by moments or hours Loki could not tell--he lay, somehow, in the back of Ms. Matilda’s car, his head on his brother’s lap, Thor’s face white and strained above him, his brother’s lips moving as he spoke into the mobile phone engulfed in his powerful hand.

Time seemed disjointed. His brother’s voice had no volume, and Loki could neither read the words upon Thor’s lips, nor hear their echo within his mind.

An acrid smoke wafted upward within the car, temporarily blotting out light and vision, but Loki only found himself comforted. He recognized the scent of that smoke, and knew, for all its throat-stinging unpleasantness, the presence of that odor meant only good.

That smoke meant that Kurt had come to him, and because Kurt knew all things of importance, he could explain to Loki why the screams of the banished men still rang within his head, and why, against all reason, he grieved for them, and accused himself, and why all that had occurred now made him feel so terrible within himself.


	6. Winding Your Way Down on Bleecker Street

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two old war buddies (?) meet up. Tony tries to be proactive about finding someone who can teach Loki to control his now-powerful magic abilities.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Gerry Rafferty tribute chapter! The chapter title is a play on the first line of Mr. Rafferty's well-known song " _Baker Street._ " " _Stuck in the Middle with You,_ by Stealer's Wheel (a Scottish folk/pop band formed in 1972 by former school chums Joe Egan and Gerry Rafferty) is, of course, the song played during the infamous ear-cutting scene in Quentin Tarantino's 1992 film debut, _Reservoir Dogs._
> 
> Cap and Wolverine have a... complicated history and have fought together as friends and against each other as foes (usually because of some lawful good vs. chaotic good sort of situation). I will state, however, without any equivocation, that my absolute favorite Cap vs. Wolverine battle is the one in which Wolverine has been driven into a more-feral-than-usual state by a mysterious town, and when Cap comes to subdue him, he (meaning Steve) turns into a full-on werewolf _while still wearing the spangle-suit_ (as I recall, his wolf ears stuck out the suit's eye holes or something). Oh, and of course Logan's wearing the yellow spandex. WereCap for the win!
> 
> Tony's "wonderful, awful idea" is taken from Dr. Seuss's " _How the Grinch Stole Christmas._ (1957) His "We will, we will mock you" is a play on Queen's 1977 song, " _We Will Rock You_ " (written by guitarist Brian May).
> 
> In the Disney version of _Pinocchio_ (1940), Honest John the Fox and Gideon the Cat are villains who lead the Little Wooden Boy astray.
> 
> Since a regular decimation kills one out of ten, Tony views the disappearance of 9/10ths of the Hydra goons as a "reverse decimation."

* * *

Up in the penthouse, a man lounged on Tony’s sofa, an ashtray  positioned carelessly on the cushion beside him and a cigar, already half burned down to ash, in his hand.  His eyes, Steve assumed, only pretended to be fixed on the screen of Stark’s overly-large television, on which the sound had been turned nearly too low for even Steve’s Super Soldier hearing to make much sense of the actors’ words. This man had always been able to watch without watching. It was only one of his many undeniable talents.

Maybe that lack of volume was a blessing, Steve considered, because the few words he could make out of the general hum seemed to have only four letters.

This didn't surprise him, really. Steve knew the man, or _had_ known him, though they’d rarely shared company out of uniform, or out of costume. Though on the same side—in theory at least—they’d shed one another’s blood often enough, and though they also shared a certain respect, no real trust lay between them.

They’d shed blood, and each time Steve had come out the winner, but this time something had changed. He wasn’t sure exactly what, but something had changed. 

This time, he wasn’t sure that, if they fought, he’d come out on top again.

“Logan,” Steve said by way of greeting, keeping his voice neutral.

“ _Reservoir Dogs_ ,” Logan replied, which wasn’t a greeting at all. “Ya seen it?”

He gestured toward the enormous television, nearly as big as the movie screen at the _Bijou_ , the theater the boys in his Brooklyn neighborhood had often sneaked into when he was young, none of them with the dimes they needed to honestly pay their way inside. Steve knew the interior of the theater well enough (never having been willing to commit that same small act of larceny) mainly because, during those years, Bucky sometimes had a job there, sweeping up after the paying customers had departed, and Steve, when he was well enough, and had his mother's permission, would often stop by to keep him company.  Mr. Hogarty, the owner, never seemed to mind--he knew Steve could be trusted--and sometimes he'd even sent both boys home with bags of leftover popcorn.

On the television screen just now, to Steve’s horror, a greasy-looking man had begun to cut off the ear of a second man, who appeared to be a police officer.

Logan laughed, _heh-heh-heh_ , that low and somehow cruel laugh Steve had often heard from him. He pressed a button, fading the awful image to black.

“Yeah. Maybe not yer thing,” he said.

“What are you doing here?”

“Guardin’.” Logan tugged a pillow off the opposite end of the sofa, tossing it carelessly to somewhere behind. “Pull up a rock.”

Steve could remember times, out in the field, when all they’d had for chairs were actual rocks, and still thought themselves lucky not to have to hunker down in the unrelenting mud. Logan never seemed to care particularly, one way or another. He probably would have been just as happy living in a cave, like a bear. When others shivered in the snow, or groused to one another during rains that never seemed to end, Logan just stumped along tirelessly, eternally silent and grim.

Steve had heard, somewhere along the grapevine in these present times, that Logan had been transferred to the War in the Pacific after his own fall into the ice, that he'd loved and married a Japanese woman, who’d been overcome by cancer, and died.

And now sweet, brave Peggy Carter, who Steve had so very nearly loved, lay dead and buried too.

So many gone now, So many fine women and men.

“Ya smell like fuckin’ nostalgia,” Logan grunted at him. “Sit.”

Shifting the brown-paper wrapped parcel under his arm from the left side to the right, Steve sat.

“What are you guarding?” he asked.

Logan laughed again, briefly. “Him,” he said at last, with a nod toward the staircase. “Upstairs. Like ya didn’t know.”

Steve set his parcel on the coffee table. Logan’s preternaturally sharp eyes flicked toward it, then away. He gestured with the end of his cigar. “That…?”

“A gift. A peace-offering, I guess. I know I kind of… um… barged in. I made assumptions.  It's a book, one Buck and I used to take out from the library when we were kids.”  Steve knew he was babbling, but somehow couldn't stop himself.  "And we... I... loved the pictures.  That's how I decided I wanted to be an artist.  I guess Bucky still likes to read.  So..."

Logan took a long pull on his cigar.  "King Arthur, Robin Hood, or Treasure Island?"

"How...?"  Steve knew he was blushing--actually blushing--but what could he do about it?  He knew he was old--old fashioned, at least--by the standards of today, but Logan was OLD.  He'd fought in the Civil War, for the good Lord's sake, and been alive through every moment since.  A verbal sparring match with him was like trying to hold his own in a battle of words with someone's worldly, irascible and battle-scarred great-granddaddy.

"King Arthur," Steve confessed. "The shop was out of Robin Hood."

Logan laughed again, but not entirely unkindly.  "Tales of fuckin' adventure and derring-do."  He turned the cigar a time or two in his fingers, studying the glowing ember at its tip.  "Kids."

"I... I guess I just thought Bucky might like it.  He did before.  I want him to be happy.  I know he isn't... He wasn't... I realize he's changed.  He'd already changed, last time we met."

“Understatement.” Logan hunched forward.  He grinned, and to anyone but Steve, that grin would have been terrifying.  Even he found the expression unsettling. 

"Romanov clear that up for ya?" Logan asked.  He stubbed out his reeking cigar in the ash tray, lighting another with one of the metal, wind-proof lighters (old fashioned now, just like Steve himself, in this age of disposable everything) the kind they’d all used, for whatever purpose, out in the field.

“Kurt told me…” Logan puffed a time or two on his smoke, getting it smoldering nicely. Smoke rose around him in clouds.  It was like sharing a sofa with a dragon. “He yanked ya straight off yer chair, flat on yer ass on the conference room floor. Funniest damn thing.” His expression changed, into something Steve couldn’t read, and his voice softened just the slightest amount. “Goddamn kid’ll sneak up on ya.”

“ _I_ certainly wasn’t expecting... it,” Steve answered. He knew better that to call that particular event, "the attack."  He'd fully earned every bit of the young German's reaction.

“I forgot about the tail,” he confessed.

Logan laughed yet again, this time with what sounded like genuine humor. “Ya can’t _ever_ forget about the tail, bub.”

“Lesson learned, believe me.” Not meaning to, Steve found himself touching his throat, feeling again those warm, soft, constricting loops tightening around his neck, inexorably cutting off his air. “No, uh, harm done.”

“He’s one hell of a good kid,” Logan told him. “Kurt, I mean. One hell of a good man. So, maybe, I’ve learned a thing or two ‘with the passage of time’ myself, as Loki might phrase it. Gotta tell ya, Cap, he’s a good kid too, that one. So much magic around him it sometimes smells like the inside of a French bordello, but a good kid. Kurt vouches for him. I don’t smell a bit of harm. Give the boy half a chance.”

“I…” Steve began, not sure what to say to that, whether he should protest, or agree, or…

“Hell, give the boy a _whole_ chance, Cap,” Logan went on. “Let him live here and be happy, and I’ll betcha he grows outta this into being a good man.”

"Maybe," Steve told him, "I will."

He wondered, if he were a better man: stronger, more forgiving, more flexible in choosing what to believe, able to make more sense out of the presence that had so agonizingly, if temporarily, occupied his head, he'd have somehow been able to present Logan with a more power affirmative.

"Yeah." After yet another drag on his cigar, Logan shrugged. "About what I expected.

The answer stung.

* * *

Tony strode toward the elevator, robe billowing around him in a way that kind of reminded him of Darth Vader’s cloak, he felt so much on the Dark Side of the Force—like he wanted Steve to be his very own Admiral Ozzel, and to choke him ‘til his eyes popped out.

None of which was in any way appropriate, but appropriate didn't really describe the way he felt right now. Actually, Tony didn’t know exactly _how_ he felt—partly strangle-y, partly as if he wanted to break down and cry like a little kid. And scared. Let’s not forget scared.

A frighteningly short time ago, if asked if he trusted his teammates, Tony felt fairly certain he'd have answered, "Yes, absolutely."  When they'd first moved into his shiny tower he'd felt a little " _Ewww! People_!"  generous housewarming gifts aside, but now he liked having them near, liked being able to run down to Bruce's at all hours of the day or night, liked pranking Clint, and Nat's immutable cool and... well, Thor and Steve.  But he _did_ like them, in his own, _We will, we will mock you_ kind of way.

But now... he kinda wished he hadn't waved Loki happily off to school, like Little Wooden Boy Pinocchio, whistling (and how the hell did you actually whistle with wooden lips) with his books slung over his shoulder and no notion in the world about all the Honest Johns and Gideons who lurked in the shadows.

Dimly, Tony heard Bruce calling his name in the distance, but didn’t—couldn’t-- slow down, or stop.

“I thought of playing theme music for your exit from the meeting,” J quipped over his ear bee as the elevator doors slid closed. A familiar, DUH DUH DUH DUH-DA-DUH DUH-DA-DUH poured out of the overhead speakers.

“Haha,” Tony answered. “You think you’re funny.”

“I believe _you_ were the one who programmed me, sir,” the A.I. sassed back, then added, In his “helpful” voice, “Loki took care of his enemies quite well enough in Berlin.”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “That’s kinda what I’m afraid of.”  And he was--in fact, the mere mention of the events in Berlin opened up a Pandora's Box of fears in Tony's head, because even though he'd saved the day _and_ his new good friend, Bucky (or James, as Loki _would_ insist), those events had made Loki so unhappy and so fearful (all of which Tony felt clearly inside his head, to a truly headache-inducing extent).  Besides which, that particular battle had started the others talking (and talking, and talking) again about "The Loki Problem," which wasn't so much what happened this time, since nobody could really disapprove of Hydra's reverse decimation, but what might happen the next time a situation like this emerged.

Worst of all, Tony (not being a total idiot) understood the concern.  Fuck, he shared a bathroom and a bed with an unimaginably powerful and no-longer-rigorously-trained sorcerer, who as certain gamers might express it, operated by the principles (such as they were) of chaotic good, and while Loki was the sweetest of all sweethearts, he was also a young man with a traumatic brain injury and a still-somewhat-shaky conception of life in the real world, in which quarks might be tiny blue ducks and Loki might decide it was a Good Idea At the Time to do literally any fucking thing that came into his head.

So, yes, Tony needed to do something, and do it with a quickness, he just didn't know what the hell that something might be.

J also seemed to be fresh out of ideas, since he didn't seem have much to say as Tony Darth Vadered his way back to the penthouse.

Logan was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he’d decided to take his duties seriously and keep the former Winter Soldier constantly in his totally intimidating line of sight at all times. Maybe they were playing checkers, or he'd felt the need to chop Bucky Barnes up into tiny pieces for the good of humanity. Who knew?

Tony found, at the moment, that he really didn’t fucking care. He showered in record time and threw some product in the general direction of his hair, but somewhere between that and tossing on the first clothes that came to hand in his dresser drawer, Tony got an idea. An awful (or potentially wonderful) idea.

 _Let's just say_ , Tony thought, _I got a wonderful, awful idea and leave it that_.

His idea had the potential, at least, to (possibly) work.  If Loki didn't get royally pissed at him for the mere suggestion and refuse to go along with it.

He definitely needed to get Kurt on board.  Kurt would lay out the whole plan in a way that sounded reasonable, even comforting, and given that Kurt was nearly always wise, as well as kind, Loki rarely disagreed with anything he suggested.

If Kurt disagreed with the plan, Tony was basically fucked.

With this in mind--and his stomach in knots--he headed for the elevator.

When the door opened, he found Bruce waiting.  Inside his own private penthouse-only elevator, without Tony having given permission.  He and J would have a chat about this.  Soon.

“Going somewhere?” his Science Bro asked.

“Mission,” Tony replied. “Are you stalking me?”

Bruce shrugged. “Something like that. I have to ask, is this an Avengers-mission type mission, because, it seems like maybe I missed the signal. Also... " His friend gave him an examining kind of look, head to toe, then back up again. ”I’m just saying, Tone, but you're kind of dressed like a low-ranking member of the Sopranos crime family.”

“And since when did you start caring about clothes?” Tony refused to look at himself. Simply refused. “Especially in regards to what I’m wearing?”

“Tone, you’re wearing a tracksuit. In public. Without a track in sight. Are you taking up running?”

“No, Bruce, I am not taking up running.” They glared at one another for an extended period of time—or, rather, Tony glared and Bruce gave him puppy-dog eyes.

Bruce did puppy-dog eyes better than anyone he’d ever met, which was, maybe, why Tony broke first.

Furthermore, when he finally took two seconds to actually glance down at himself and what he was wearing, he realized Bruce totally had a point. “Jesus. All I lack is a mega-carat gold chain and an exaggerated New Jersey accent.”

“You could work the exaggerated Long Island accent for a while, maybe," Bruce helpfully suggested.  "Work your way up to the exaggerated Jersey accent over time?”

“Everyone’s a comedian,” Tony grumped back. Much as he loved Bruce, his brother from another mother, he just wasn’t up for this today.

“Clearly I’m not welcome,” Bruce went on, cheerfully, as the door slid open in front of them at the lobby level.

Tony unfolded his sunglasses and pulled on a baseball cap, tugging the bill low over his lens-covered eyes.

“Oh, we’re incognito today! Very mysterious.”

“Bruce…” Tony tried really, really hard to keep his voice patient. Bruce, after all, was his friend. His best friend. “I don’t… I can’t really… I can’t today. I just can’t.”

“Tony, I’m going with you.”

“You’re not, Bruce. You’re really not.”

“I am,” Bruce answered. “Do you want to know the reason?”

“Uh... Let me think. No.”

“Because, as your friend, I know how you get, and I don’t want how you get to get you in trouble.” He followed Tony out into the thin late-winter sunlight. “So tell me, what’s the mission?”

“No,” Tony repeated.

Undeterred, Bruce followed him into the yellow cab that Tony picked up from the curbside cabstand. “Where are we going?”

“The Village,” Tony growled back, telling the driver in a marginally more civilized tone, “177A Bleecker Street.”

“Hey, isn’t that…?” Bruce gave a low whistle. “Where… you know… that guy lives?”

“Yes, Bruce,” Tony snarked back. “It is where ‘that guy’ lives.”

“Is it about Loki?”

“Why would it be about Loki?”

“Sheesh, you're cranky today! Oh, I dunno… Master of the Mystic Arts, out-of-control young alien sorcerer… What could possibly be the connection?”

“Loki’s not out of control. Loki’s a teddy bear.”

“Okay, then," Bruce went on, in what counted, for him, as forcefully. "Am I allowed to say ‘concerned,' as in, we’re all concerned that Loki might hurt himself?”

“Say what you mean, bro. ‘And others.’”

“If you insist, my friend.  We all are a little worried that Loki—accidentally, of course—that Loki might hurt himself or others. Tell me that’s not exactly what you were thinking, and why you tried to take off from the tower like a bat out of hell without any company.”

“Do bats usually travel in company when they leave hell?”

“Shut up. You know what I mean. Pay the driver.”

Tony paid.  He even gave a generous tip.

The house they’d stopped outside made no pretense of being an ordinary Greenwich Village townhouse. In fact, the place might as well have had a shingle hung out front that read, “Home of the Sorcerer Supreme, Master of the Mystic Arts.”

“If you…” Bruce wondered, “For example, were the Sorcerer Supreme, would you call yourself the Sorcerer Supreme, or would you pick something… I dunno… a little more modest?”

“You, or me?” Tony answered. “Because—have you met me? I’d totally call myself the Sorcerer Supreme. You know I would.”

Bruce, who did know him, and actually knew him really well, better than anyone, even Pepper, had ever known him before Loki, didn’t laugh.  Instead he put a hand on Tony’s shoulder.

“I do know,” he said. “I also know everything will be okay in the end. You'll see.”

Tony wanted like hell to believe him.


	7. Visits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Bruce go to see Dr. Strange. Loki gives himself a talking-to. Steve has a visitor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I like a healthy breeze round my privates, thanks" is a quote from _Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire_ (2000).
> 
> conEdison (conEd) supplies electricity to New York City.
> 
> chutzpah=overwhelming self-confidence (though not necessarily in a good way)
> 
>  _inamorato_ =a man one loves in a romantic way (the female version, " _inamorata_ " is heard more often in everyday use).

* * *

Tony rang the bell at 177A Bleecker Street, telling himself this was no big, he could handle a wizard. After all, he’d been handling one (often literally, frequently in several unquestionably fun ways) for months now.

Bruce, though, wasn’t exactly helping his positive self-talk by hovering behind his shoulder, just a little too close inside Tony’s personal space bubble for complete comfort and, well… did he mention hovering?

“Bro, you’re making me nervous,” Tony hissed, just as the door swung open in front of him, he assumed by agency of the man framed in the doorway. Or maybe by The Mystic Arts. Maybe by the man in the doorway using the Mystic Arts. Who knew?

The door-opener wasn’t Dr. Strange—Tony got that right off the bat—but was, instead, a middle-aged Asian man: slightly stout, genial- looking, and wearing a knee-length blue robe-y type get-up belted in with a wide sash. Over pants, thank the gods. Tony thought he probably would have had to turn around and go home if the guy hadn’t been wearing pants. That kind of thing crossed the line way too far into Wizarding World, “ _I like a healthy breeze round my privates, thanks_ ” territory.

“Mr. Stark!” the friendly-looking man exclaimed. “We thought we might be expecting you!”

Tony hadn't quite finished puzzling over the guy’s verb tenses when he realized they’d been ushered in.

 _Someone forget to pay conEd?_ he found himself wondering, once the big front door smacked shut behind him, barely allowing enough time for still-hovering Bruce to cross the threshold. TARDIS-like, the place looked suspiciously larger on the inside than it had on the outside, not exactly overly-lighted, with a disconcerting number of dark corners and crannies and a thick, almost ambery quality to the air that made everything look dusty, even though it probably wasn’t.

Once Tony had blinked a couple times, adjusting his eyes to the low-light conditions, it came to him that Dr. Strange owned a shit-ton of stuff. Like excellent, museum-quality stuff, but still a ton of it. It also didn't escape his notice that the eye-catching wooden staircase, right there in the middle of everything, looked weirdly too long for the space it covered. Sure, the place had high ceilings, and those stairs linked the first and second floors, but the too-longness couldn't help but strike him as _wrong_ , a wrongness he just couldn’t make his brain reconcile, which not only offended his engineer sensibilities but made him feel slightly sea-sick.

Maybe it was some kind of protective spell against architects. engineers, and other "we like our measurements accurate, thank you!" types such as himself.

Halfway down this unexpectedly irritating staircase stood a tall man (not Norse-god-tall, but tall) with a beard almost exactly like Tony’s own. He also had on the most ridiculous fucking outfit Tony had ever seen on an actual person not starring as the Grand Vizier Jafar in a Broadway production of _Aladdin_. The flashiest stage magician to ever hocus pocus in Vegas would have rejected that particular sorcerer suit with an emphatic, “ _Nope. No way. That’s too much._ ”

On the other hand, the get-up matched well with having the extreme chutzpah to actually call yourself, “Sorcerer Supreme.”

“You have come,” Mr. Fancy Pants intoned, “To implore my aid.” His eyes (a pale blue-green and so cold they probably could have iced an entire case of soft drinks with one glance) narrowed. “You need my help in controlling your… _inamorato_.”

 _Say what?_ Tony thought. He felt his jaw actually drop.

“His name is Loki,” Bruce piped up. “No one wants him controlled. Not as such. He’s a sweet kid, and it’s just… no one wants him to get hurt. Or anyone. Tony heard that’s kind of what you do.”

Tony himself continued to struggle with Loki being referred to as his “ _inamorato_.” Like, although he knew what Strange meant, he found the combination of pretentiousness, snobbery and downright rudeness totally dumbfounding. Thank god Bruce had insisted on coming with—after that piece of deliberate shade, Tony didn’t know how soon he’d be able to speak again without coming out snarking.

“I know of Loki of Asgard.” Strange proceeded to descend the stairs, his red cape swishing, somehow managing to sneer without his lips actually doing anything sneery. “The ‘God of Mischief.’ The ‘sweet kid’ who destroyed a great swathe of New York, yes?”

“The point is,” Bruce protested. “He’s not really Loki of Asgard, trained sorcerer and villain any more. He’s just a lost young guy with a ton of power that he doesn’t know how to handle. We don’t want him to lose control, and I suspect you don’t want that either. We assumed, Dr. Strange, that it would be in your best interests to help.”

 _No way,_ Tony thought. _No way this conceited fucker gets anywhere near Loki._

He plucked on the sleeve of Bruce’s long-sleeved Henley.

“Bruce, let’s go. The man’s clearly not interested.”

The moment they turned away from the Sorcerer Supreme, an unnecessarily-complicated deadbolt locked up the front door, making about nine individual dismal-sounding clicks in the process. Clearly, they wouldn’t be exiting until Strange said they’d be exiting.

“Bring your self-styled god here,” Strange said—a clear cut order, not a request. “We will consider what’s to be done with him.”

 _Uh... yeah. Was that a royal-type 'we?_  ' Tony wanted to ask, but never got the chance, because two seconds later, he and Bruce found themselves standing, squinting, discombobulated and clutching one another for balance, on the sunny sidewalk, with no idea how they got there.

“That went well,” Bruce gasped, shifting his death-grip to Tony’s arm.

“Shit,” Tony responded. “What the actual hell?”

“You said it, my friend.”

They traded looks.

“Have you ever noticed…?” Bruce glanced back at the house, now dark and shuttered, but otherwise apparently normal. “How some people really, really fit their names?”

“Stephen?” Tony asked, in a semi-vain attempt to collect his equilibrium.

“Sure.” Bruce huffed out a brief laugh. “That’s what I meant. Stephen.”

* * *

They landed in Loki and Tony’s bedroom, on the bed, not a hard fall, like the last time, but with only a slight bounce.

Loki’s head spun at first, an odd, woozy, near-drunken feeling, much like the way he'd felt on New Year's Eve, after his first two glasses of that wicked beverage, champagne. After he flopped back onto the mattress, though (Kurt flopped beside him) and lay still for a bit, he soon felt better—or would have felt better, had he not been caught up in the semi-frantic stream of words in the German language that flowed through Kurt’s head.

He laid his hand flat on his dear friend’s chest, feeling how Kurt’s heart raced. Only then did he notice that Kurt wore the shapeless pale-blue garments, rather like pyjamas, called “scrubs,” and that an equally shapeless blue hat covered Kurt’s charmingly untidy curls. In an instant, Loki forsook all thoughts of his own woes.

“Kurt?” he said, his own voice sounding plaintive to his ears. “Dear friend?”

“It’s…” Kurt answered. “It’s… all right. Just give me a moment, won’t you?”

Loki felt too anxious, though, to do as Kurt asked. Kurt felt frightened, and Kurt never became frightened, not in any way of which Loki had been aware--and because of this Kurt's fear made him feel frightened too.

“Kurt, my dearest friend..." Loki's voice shook as he spoke, which shamed him. "Have I made you teleport too far and drained your strength thereby?”

The moment he said the words, though, Loki knew that was in no way the case. Instead, he’d done a terrible thing to Kurt, summoning his kind friend because of uncertainty and panic, not because of any true danger. By doing so, he'd not merely “outed” Kurt as a mutant (something which would surely be obvious to anyone with eyes to see), but as a mutant with uncanny powers.

To judge by his clothing, Kurt had been occupied with one of his classes, an endeavor of great import, but upon hearing Loki’s cry, he'd teleported at once, with no immediate thought to circumstance or his own reputation, vanishing from the classroom in his usual burst of fire and brimstone.

He, Loki, had made an impossible situation for his loving friend, who had never been anything but kind to him. Cheeks burning, he unwove the fabric of the air to make a space for himself and slipped through, straight to a place that felt both safer than any other, but disconnected, also, from his life in the tower—his dear friend Athena’s studio.

Loki loved this studio which, unlike the workshop he shared with his brother, always seemed cluttered and untidy. Normally Loki loathed untidiness, but Athena made the state of disorder somehow lovely, perhaps because out of the untidiness countless signs of Athena's marvelous creativity had burst through like flowers in spring. The studio held numerous items still in the process of making. Warm and inviting color showed everywhere, and any number of fascinating bits and pieces had been sorted into jars or translucent boxes, only waiting for the moment they'd become part of something extraordinary.

Loki lit the electric fire and sat upon the worn, yet still lovely carpet. After a short time, Athena’s little grey-and-white cat appeared out of nowhere, her footfalls amusingly loud despite her minute size, as if to announce the arrival of some mighty and impressive being, a ruler of the universe. She bumped her head against Loki’s thigh, ears sharp-pricked and twitching, spine arched and tail proudly upright, demanding attention like a small but extremely haughty queen.

Loki stroked her forehead with his thumb, her fur satin-soft to his touch. Unlike many cats, she never seemed to shed out her fluff, white and fine as dandelion seed, but remained, always, sleek and strokable.

“Why should you desire my touch, little one?” Loki asked. "What am I to you, sweet, selfish, queen of cats? A warm lap and a willingness to do your bidding?"

Misty (for such was her name, and she did indeed resemble, in her colours, the fogs and stormclouds and mist that hung above the great city from time to time) only nosed more insistently into Loki's hand, demanding that his attentions continue.

“I am a bad person,” Loki told her. “ I am a very bad person--if I am a person at all, and not a monster of some sort or another.”

The cat gave a single sharp yowl, as if demanding why he’d confessed to such a thing, and why, also, he sat upon the carpet feeling such pity for himself, when he ought to let Thor and Tony know he was well, and deliver to Kurt--and also to Mr. Tobit, for neglecting to attend his class yet again--his most sincere apologies.

Loki ran his hand again along the cat's sleek back, scritching with his trimmed claws at just the place where her tail rose upright, a furry mark of exclamation.

 _is that how others see me?_ Loki wondered. Was he, to them, something sweet but selfish, somewhat decorative, quick to seek affection, yet acting, always like the king of all he surveyed? He did not mean to seem so, but perhaps he did anyway, especially to those who did not hold him dear. Was it for that reason, not because of White Loki at all, that those of Tony's team seemed to find him so entirely irritating?

Loki found the idea painful--although seen from their perspective, it might indeed be true.

He would have liked to ask Athena, who could always be counted on to be truthful (though also wise, like her namesake the goddess), as well as unfailingly kind to him. Athena, however, though he waited through the space of half an hour, did not return home, and Loki knew it would be foolish to linger, discoursing upon his place in the universe with a creature that held no answers for him.

With that in mind, he opened a second hole, and went.

 

Loki hadn't thought about his destination, and so found himself slightly surprised to find himself in James's room, which had once been his, where his friend and Logan engaged in a silent game of checkers (a game Loki found not in the least bit interesting), the only noise between them the irritating _zzzt zzzt zzzt_ noise that James's mechanical arm made ceaselessly.

Logan gave him a brief nod, but acknowledged his arrival in no other way.

Loki withdrew to the bed and perched there, watching the dull game, wishing that Tony would come home, and that he had not offended Kurt, or leapt away from his brother, or committed a thousand other acts that might be seen in some way as offensive. He ought to be strong, he knew, and determined, never expecting others to coddle or care for him.

With that in mind he slipped away, into the bedroom where Kurt no longer lay, now dark and empty, with the bed neatly made.  Tony, undoubtedly, would still be at work, as indeed Loki most likely ought to have been as well. His fiance, generously, had allowed him to set his own hours, and it occurred to Loki that he ought to have been more regular in attending to his duties, such as they were, not come and go as he pleased, like some entitled prince.

Standing by the bureau, slipping the silver rings from his horns and his fingers, he realized he'd begun to weep, and swiped the tears away angrily. What reason had he to cry, when he had wealth, and friendship and a lovely place to live? Perhaps he wept because everything he had had been given to him, and he was also a ridiculous creature, with his horns and blue skin, his wild long hair and his _ergi_ ways.  Why had he not tried harder? Why had he not made amends? Why must he be as he was?

He left the bedroom for the en suite bathroom, digging out a pair of scissors from the back of a drawer.  Some things could not be remedied, some might take a long while to repair, but others he might fix immediately.  He bent forward, gathered all his long hair into one tail at the front, and snipped.

The ugliness struck him at once when he looked again into the glass, his hair all ragged around his face.  Cutting it for oneself was extremely awkward, nothing at all like the ease Tony's barber seemed to display when each week or so he cut Tony's hair to its usual length.  Loki had to remind himself repeatedly that the mirror showed his image backward, and that he must not get the sharp tip of the scissors too close to his eye, but in the end he'd managed an approximation of the way Steve's hair was cut (though he had to use a small amount of magic to make everything even in the end, and also to clean up the quantities of hair that seemed to have gone everywhere in the bathroom).

He thought of using magic to remove his horns altogether, but could not bring himself to do it. Already he looked so unlike himself, his face all angles, paler than it ought to have been, his eyes nearly as red with weeping as they'd been before he turned them green.

"Be not foolish," he informed his displeasing image in the glass. "This is your home now.  You are neither a prince, nor a cat, to have your way, and you must act as those of Midgard act, speak as they speak, dress as they dress.  You must beg forgiveness from all you have wronged, and display no more of this foolishness." 

* * *

The knock on his door surprised Steve. When he opened up, he found a familiar, if not necessarily welcome, visitor standing on the mat.

Loki's appearance, however, surprised him. Though still well over six feet, pale blue, and horned, Steve had never seen him dressed in anything like his current outfit of charcoal-gray trousers, navy sport coat, and a button-down shirt slightly paler than his own skin. He even wore a tie, which although perfectly coordinated with the conservative clothing, contrasted a little oddly with the horns.

Strangest of all, Loki seemed to have copied Steve's own haircut down to the last snip.

“I have only recently left work,” Loki explained. “I am work-appropriate, and I have come to beg your pardon.”

Steve wasn’t exactly sure how to answer this statement. Loki’s outfit certainly was a change from his usual attire, which tended toward the dramatic. Instead he opened the door wider, stepping aside to let his visitor enter.

“I believed you might feel more comfortable in my presence if you saw me dressed thus," the former Prince of Asgard said. "I also thought this time might be appropriate for my visit, as between the working day and the dinner hour. I hope that I have not interrupted anything of import. Please tell me if I have.”

“No.” Steve found a smile hovering over his mouth. “Not at all. I was just sketching a little. Doodling, really. Have a seat?”

“My thanks,” Loki told him, and sat, setting the container he’d brought with him on the coffee table. “I have brought cookies. Oatmeal and raisin, which I am informed are your favorites. Also I have put the chips of butterscotch within them. I made them myself. They have formerly been frozen, but are no worse for that.”

“They sound great,” Steve answered, slightly apprehensive about Loki’s cooking skills. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? A Coke?”

“A Coke would be wholly acceptable,” Loki answered, with a bright smile, though his eyes looked red, as if he'd been crying. He also looked sad, and more than a little tired. “I greatly enjoy the bubbles.”

“I enjoy the bubbles too,” Steve confessed, and went to fetch two Cokes from the icebox, along with two glasses from the cupboard.

Loki poured his soda carefully, clearly afraid of overflowing the glass. He sipped the Coke with equal care, eyes shutting briefly.

The reason for all that care, Steve realized, was that Loki’s hands were shaking badly.

Steve opened the box of cookies and took one, biting the treat cautiously. It was delicious, buttery and moist. “Really good, Loki.”

“It is a recipe of Pinterest,” Loki informed him. I have found many excellent recipes of Pinterest. If I must eat all the time, I’ve come to the conclusion that what I eat might as well be tasty.”

 _Why do you need to eat all the time?_   Steve thought about asking, but didn’t. Loki looked thinner than he had in quite a while, so that was probably reason enough.

“I’ve come,” Loki began, “Because I have been thinking.  Deeply..." the ghost of a smile flickered across his lips. "Or, as deeply as I am capable, which is perhaps not deeply at all. Oh, first of all I must tell you! James received the book you sent to him as a gift and has already read it through twice, for it gives him great enjoyment. We both find the illustrations of Mr. N. C. Wyeth entrancing.”

“Buck and I…” Steve stopped himself.

“I apologize, as I must, for my calling of your friend, ‘James.’ As Tony has no doubt related, I have my… quirks.” Loki paused. “Which are not in any way to be confused with quarks, despite the similarity of the words. Quarks are another thing entirely, ‘quirks’ merely my many ways of being odd by the standards of Midgard, and I am very sorry for them.  I will endeavor as best I can to do better.”

"We all have quirks, Loki."

His visitor looked so earnest, and so miserable, it made Steve uncomfortable. For the first time it struck him that this tall, thin bundle of sorrow and anxiety really was nothing at all like the Loki who'd wreaked havok through S.H.I.E.L.D. and in the skies of New York. The realization--along with the memory of his own acts, whether Odin-influenced or not--made him feel slightly sick.

"Oh, but we are the same," Loki corrected, soft-voiced. "The fact that I share neither his memories nor his inclinations, excuses nothing, I know that now, and if you truly feel I must be punished, then I submit to that punishment. I am not Misty, I am responsible for what I have done."

"Misty...?" Steve said faintly.

"My dear friend Athena's cat.  Cats, though charming, are somewhat selfish and entitled creatures.  I am not a cat."

Not knowing quite how to answer that, Steve nudged the cookie box closer to Loki. “Have one?”

“But they were not made for me,” Loki protested.

“I like to share,” Steve told him.

“My thanks.” Loki took a cookie, holding it cupped in his hands and staring at it intensely for some time before venturing to nervously nibble one edge. “I regret—truly regret—and wish that you would believe me, Captain Rogers, that relations between us have grown so bitter. Please know, I will be grateful to you for my… rescue until the day my journey begins. Likewise, I hold no punishment you may require against you, but only against myself.”

 _Journey?_ Steve thought. _Is Loki going on a trip._

“No, no,” Loki assured him. “Not unless you require one of me. My journey unto the Dismal Lands, I meant, which is not the same thing.”

“Um… Hell?” Steve didn’t really like the way this conversation seemed to be going. It was God’s choice, it struck him--not his, never his, to decide whether someone was truly Hell-bound. And yet he'd judged Loki anyway.

“I fear you’re confused, Captain Rogers. Hel—or Hela—is queen of the Dismal Lands. The Dismal lands are the Dismal Lands, and the journey I speak of is the journey of death. As a warrior of great reknown," Loki told Steve in apparently-meant-to-be-soothing kind of way, “You will undoubtedly go to Valhalla, as will Thor, my brother. Kurt went to Heaven, but came home again to Midgard. Thor has been explaining our beliefs, yet I find them extremely confusing. Perhaps it is the damage within my brain. May I have another cookie, please? Kurt calls ‘please’ the magic word, but it is not at all magic. It is, however, extremely polite.”

Silently, Steve offered the box. Loki gazed back at him, clearly waiting for something.

“Please, Loki, have a cookie,” Steve said.

Loki took one, the tense, shy smile flickering once more over his mouth. “Again, the magic word!”

He munched down his cookie in obvious, if somewhat mournful, enjoyment.

“What I had meant to say,” Loki went on, after he’d finished chewing. “As what Tony calls an ‘ice breaker’—not the sort of ship designed to force its way through ice, but the metaphorical construct as an opening to conversation. Truly, ice breaker or not, I do wish to express thanks again for the kindness you did me. It was an act of great heart and generosity, and no doubt prevented my untimely demise. I find sorrow, also, in the truth that discovery of my identity has poisoned this good act for you.”

“Poisoned is a pretty strong word, Loki.”

“You have every right to find pride in a work of kindness, despite the unworthiness of he who receives it.”

“That’s not really what I meant.” Steve sighed. “Um... I had a talk with Logan. Your name was mentioned.”

“I had not known that you and he were friends,” Loki commented. “I like Logan, greatly, yet at the same time, he terrifies me slightly. Perhaps it is only Kurt who is not affected so. His presence is formidable.”

“We’re not exactly friends,” Steve admitted.

“Once-comrades, then. Shield-Brothers.”

“That’s a way to put it.”

“Indeed.” Loki nibbled thoughtfully on a third cookie.

“Can I offer you something more substantial, Loki? You seem hungry.”

“Having arrived unannounced and uninvited, it would not be polite to ask.”

“You didn’t ask, Loki. I offered.”

“Have you cheese, perhaps? My body requires much in the way of fats and proteins, Hank informs me, and deprived of them, shows an unfortunate tendency to vomit at inopportune times. And I would not vomit, I would converse with you and, with hope, dispel some of the ill-will between us. I would also wish, once more, to open a bridge of communication--rather like the rainbow bridge Thor tells me of, called The Bifrost, capable of uniting worlds--between you and the friend of your bosom, James. He has much fear within his heart, and great confusion, but I believe-- I honestly believe--he might be able to listen to me."

Loki set the remains of his cookie carefully on the coffee table, not dropping a crumb. "I would do anything to atone, Captain Rogers," he said, so quietly that even with his Super Soldier hearing, Steve could hardly made out the words. "Anything you ask of me. Truly."

Confronted with that statement, Steve found himself totally at a loss. What should he say? What would anyone say?

"I..." Steve's tongue seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. His brain might as well have turned to mush.

Loki sat patiently, hands folded in his lap, big green eyes locked on Steve's.

"Loki, I..." Steve tried again. "I... that is to say, you've done enough. You brought Bucky home. That's all I need."

"I believe," Loki said. "I truly believe that, in time, James will come to be something like the man you have known. He will love you again, and you shall love him, and all will come out well."

 _Love?_ Steve thought. _It's not..._

_Right. How many times did he actually plan to deny his emotions?_

Somehow, Steve guessed, he'd maintained a powerful ability to lie to himself, the way he had always lied, but those same flimsy fibs would be useless with Loki. To Loki his mind might as well be a book, one with large print and simple words.

And so, if he had to tell the truth to Loki, why not also tell the truth to himself? "Truth, Justice and the American Way"--wasn't that his personal code?

"There's no shame to love," Loki told him, in a quiet, almost shy voice. "Despite what you were taught, and I was taught also, it appears, in both our days of youth. We can only be as we are, and love as we are. All other paths are falsehood."

Loki touched Steve's hand lightly, his blue skin cool against Steve's skin.

Steve stared at that long, narrow hand, with its thick black nails and faint white markings, considering all his visitor had told him.

 _We can only be as we are,_ he thought. _We can only be as we are._

He'd altered his entire life, his entire body, been lost in time and come out again--but still, large or small, in his own time or another, there was thing he'd undoubtedly Learned: he really could only be Steve.

Steve, who'd pretended (and almost made himself believe) that he loved Peggy, that Peggy was his girl, his one-and-only, his forever love, when all the time he knew, in the deepest part of his heart, that he'd lied to both her and to himself. What society expected, and what he told himself he _must_ do, only wove a larger and thicker cloth of lies, one that would ultimately smother him.

He loved Bucky. He had always loved Bucky, and if he could be patient, and kind, then maybe, just maybe, their friendship might grow again, and--if Loki's prediction held true--from that friendship Bucky might come to love him as well.

"Even so," Loki murmured. "Even so."


	8. Pep Talks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A romantic X-terlude. Tony is encouraging.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unlike the English word "also" (which equals the German word " _auch_ "), the German " _also_ " means "thus" or "therefore" (though in a potentially less-formal way).
> 
> In Spanish, the word " _compadre_ " can mean "co-father" (as in a two-dad family, or the relationship between a father and godfather), or be a term of friendship and respect for a man (the feminine version, not surprisingly, is " _comadre_ ). As adopted into English, it simply means "friend," and can be used for either a man or a woman.
> 
> "passel"=a group of people or things to numerous to be easily counted  
> The word is actually a version of "parcel," left over from the time when one could refer to a group as a "parcel of people," as in the 1791 Robert Burns poem about English rule that became the Scottish folk song, " _Parcel of Rogues_." It originates from that same same little twist of colloquial English pronunciation that's been know to drop the "r" from the middle of certain words, thus turning "curse" into "cuss" and "burst" into "bust." Although the spelling "passel" first showed up in the 15th century, the word didn't really come to be used in the current sense until it was adopted in certain parts of the U.S. during the mid-19th century, finally coming into common use in the 1940s.
> 
> "hair-trigger"=set of by the slightest amount of pressure
> 
> To "throw down" evolved from the familiar phrase "throw down the gauntlet," meaning to issue a challenge. In its shorted form, it entered U.S. slang via 1990s street culture. It originally meant to invite or get into a physical fight (as Tony uses it), but since then it has come to be used both in its original context and in the sense of getting involved in a battle of wits, skill, or even friendly competition.
> 
> "Willy-nilly," in this case, means "haphazardly," though its second meaning, more closely related to its origin, is "whether I want to or not." Originally spelled "will I, nill I ("I'm willing, I'm not willing"), the phrase comes down to us from the 17th century.
> 
> "Lost the plot," in this case, means to no longer understand why one does something.

* * *

" _Also..._ " Kurt began, turning his bottle of _Winzeldorf Braun_ gently, fingertips only, looking like the colorful label took up every last bit of his attention.

That wasn't the case, and Logan knew it. With Kurt, it never would be actually the case, because Kurt was nothing if not constantly attuned to his surroundings. Part of that tied into his abilities, the other part...

Yeah, the _other_ part. He himself had lived through interference from shady government types, and mad scientists types--plenty of 'em. What he didn't have to deal with was the ordinary Joe or Jane on the street, judging, rejecting, hating.

Always hating. Folks liked to think they'd gotten more civilized in the last hundred, hundred-fifty years since Logan was a kid, but they hadn't. Not really. Some, maybe, but a fucking long way from all, or even most.

There sat his Kurt, not really fixated on that damn beer bottle label with the chesty yellow-haired girl holding up a pair of overflowing steins. Those long lashes of his veiled his candle-bright eyes, his messy curls went everywhere, and the soft curve of his lips looked always just about ready to grin, even on rare nights like this, when the fear and disappointment and... weariness just kinda leaked out, even though Logan never could smell those things from him, the way he could with everyone else.

Kurt--and maybe this was Bucky-fuckin'-Barnes, hiding in his big stack of old books rubbing off on him--Kurt smelled the way Logan imagined a marketplace in the Arabian Nights would smell, like fire, and sweet spices, and the desert.

Kurt might say, "Oh, _ja_ , so I smell like _him_?" one eyebrow quirked up in that funny, not-quite skeptical way of his.

Only Kurt didn't smell like him, if by "him," you meant his father Azazel, a fucker of the first order. Azazel, who by all accounts was older than fuck, smelled like spices, yeah, but like the spices folded into the cerements of mummies, buried for goddamn ever under the Eqyptian sands.

_Cerements_. Christ. Now there was a Loki word.

Kurt, on the other hand, just smelled like Kurt. Yeah, he smelled like magic, but like a _clean_ magic, if such a thing existed.

What Logan didn't like, though, was his lover giving off the _Unsafe! Unsafe!_ vibration currently twanging off every fuzzy inch of his body. For one thing, _München_  was _their_ place in the City, and Kurt had always felt safe here. Or relatively safe. Kurt talked  friendly, slangy German with the staff, and the two of them even had a "usual booth" way in a back corner, where Kurt could more or less melt into the shadows if he felt it necessary. He didn't often do it. Only sometimes.

"Nope," Logan told him. "Don't ' _also_ ' me, bub. It don't follow. There's no 'therefores' here. No 'therefore I need to do this.' Ya know what needs to be done? Nothin'. Tomorrow ya stroll into class, maybe say 'sorry' to the Prof that you had to leave. Tell her 'family emergency' and drop it." Logan gave a low, rumbling laugh. "Ya think maybe they already guessed yer a mutant?"

"I felt angry with Loki, though. How could I feel angry with Loki? I reacted, but he'd asked nothing of me."

Logan just gave him a look. Squinty-eyed. "Yeah, how dare ya be human?"

Kurt mumbled something too quick and quiet for even Logan's knife-sharp hearing to pick up, even though his German wasn't bad these days, and rapidly improving. Kurt often lapsed into his native tongue when they made love. Logan liked to understand what he was saying.

He still kinda hated/snickered at himself, just a little, for using that sappy phrase. 'Made love.' Fucking hell. He'd previously only applied those words to Mariko (still not aloud, in his thoughts only), who Logan had to admit he'd kinda put on a pedestal. A younger him. Different times.

He didn't put Kurt on a pedestal. Kurt had been his friend (not just his _good_ friend, but his _best_ friend--not his buddy, not his pal, not just his _compadre_ , but his best friend), and then Kurt had been dead, and he (tell the truth here, James) more than any other time in his life, had wished he could be dead too.

Only then Kurt came back again. And.

And.

Kurt was an armful of blue velvet, and compared to Logan's own bulk (maybe it was the loss of him, that terrible, lonely, terrifying loss), and despite Kurt's own strength, which he knew to be considerable, Kurt felt fragile, breakable. Every time, too, it felt like they were building something, making it stronger, making it more resilient, in a way Logan found kinda terrifying too, because he never let that much of himself go. Never.

So it wasn't fucking, with Kurt, or even sex, it was making love, and he, James "Logan" Howlett had a heart after all. Who knew?

"Are we both brooding tonight?" Kurt asked him, his voice light, warm, inviting of confidences. It was a thing his lover did--one hint of gloom from anyone else and he'd throw his own personal shit to the winds and instantly turn into Mr. Empathy.

"Nope," Logan said, for the second time. "Not me. How 'bout you?" He put a big hand over Kurt's hand, the one not otherwise occupied with the bottle. "Love ya, Elf. Ya know that?"

Kurt blinked. Those words--or Kurt's version of those words, whether "I love you" or "Ich liebe dich"--were something his lover said all the time. No less heartfelt for being common, but common.

Logan never said them. They were meant to be understood.

Kurt's tail made a gentle waving motion in the air behind him, but Logan, though he considered himself pretty fluent in the Language of the Tail, couldn't decipher exactly what that motion meant.

"Okay." Logan decided to plunge in feet first. Why the hell not? "Yer upset. Ya got outed ta yer entire class, not just as a mutant, but one of those mutants. So what?"

"So what?" Kurt echoed. " _Ach du lieber_ , Logan, I'd think that would be self-explanatory."

"So what. My advice stands. So th' others aren't yer bestest best friends? So what. Ya got friends, plenty of 'em. They boot ya outta that school? So what. Ya find another school that's not run by a loada nervous dicks."

Kurt laughed. "And this is why I love you."

"For my bluntness and lack of tact?"

" _Ja_ , Logan." Kurt grinned. "Something like that."

Logan leaned back in his seat, grinning too. "Gonna fill me in now what's up with his highnessness? Impromptu trips ta the Motherland aside. That's why ya 'ported straight outta Gross Anatomy fer parts unknown, right?"

"'His highnessness?'" Kurt shook his head. " _Ach_... call it a moral quandry, for lack of better words. The Hydra agents in Berlin actually frightened Loki badly, and though he transported them to Limbo as an alternative to killing the whole corrupt lot of them outright, he now questions himself, whether he was too cruel in doing so, whether that solution was the best solution to the problem. All the way home, the QuinJet was one vast swamp of 'Oh, no, magic!' and 'Is Loki still dangerous?' and 'Can Loki be trusted?'" and Loki is so..."

"Loki is so _Loki_." Logan laughed.

He genuinely liked the kid, but the kid could also be a tangled-up bundle of hopes and wishes and fear. He could sympathize with the whole 'I have no fucking idea who I am' conundrum, but beyond that, even Loki's layers had layers. Also, the kid thought too much, about too many things. He tried too hard, when he didn't need to, and those Avengers fuckers could have gone a long way in making his life a hell of a lot easier.

"Loki feels weighed down badly by the acts of his previous incarnation," Kurt went on. "He's often nearly overwhelmed by guilt over acts which he would never commit and absolutely does not remember. He also worries constantly--does he lean on me, or on Tony too much? Does he behave as other Midgardians behave? Do people see him as hideous, freakish, weak, untrustworthy? He has virtually no experience of life, nothing to draw on to balance those burdens. He wants to be industrious and responsible, but I don't think he's getting enough sleep, or enough to eat, and Hank and I are mostly playing guessing games when it comes to how to help him."

"Seems like yer carrying some weight there too, Elf," Logan commented.

Kurt'as grin flashed and faded. He took a pull from his beer, then set the bottle down again, precisely, on its coaster.

"Don't..." Kurt looked up again, his eyes the dark yellow of strong emotion. They weren't hard to read at all, if you knew him.

"Don't be jealous?" Logan leaned forward, this time taking both his lover's hands in his own, feeling the strength of them, the velvet skin, the part-rough, part-prickly texture of the palms. "Didn't ya hear me, Elf? I love ya. That's a sure thing between us. But Loki's like ya--maybe the fucked-up version, but still the person most like ya, probably the most like ya yer ever going to meet. He gets all of ya. Ya get all him. I can't. I love ya, but I can't. Not equipped."

Kurt's hands turned, those hands--so strange, but so perfect--now holding Logan's hands, instead of Logan holding his. "You're everything you need to be, _lieber_ Logan. Everything."

His smile showed just to slightest hint of fang, and his eyes glowed bright and clear. He looked young, and perfect and... face it, cute as hell.

Logan touched his cheek and Kurt turned his face into the touch, that velvet fur, warm and incredibly soft against his own hard hand.

"Yeah, Elf," he answered hoarsely. "Ya said it. Yer everythin' I need too."

* * *

Tony returned to penthouse completely drained, questioning in a major way why he’d ever thought consulting Steve Strange would be a good thing, and, more than that, how he’d manage to break the news of that particular bright idea to his honey, especially since it seemed like Strange’s attention, once engaged, didn't seem likely to fade gently away with the passage of time.

Beyond that, it hit him that, to Loki, it might seem as if Tony had sneakily gone behind his back (which, hindsight being 20/20, he totally had), that Tony didn’t trust him (which, to be clear, wasn’t the case, in that he _totally_ trusted Loki himself, it was the whole realm of _magic_ he found weird and iffy, maybe even downright dangerous), or even that Tony disapproved, for some insane reason, of the way Loki had dealt with the passel of Hydra goons they’d thrown down with in Berlin (which he totally didn’t—if anything he awarded Loki extra points for creativity).

He found Loki perched on a stool at the kitchen counter, wearing a pristine chef's apron over an example of "office appropriate attire" so screamingly conservative Tony could scarcely believe his honey had allowed those particular items to take up closet space alongside his usual stylin' outfits. He had a knife in one hand, and despite handling both the knife and the veggies in a way that made them look as if they weighed about a hundred pounds apiece, he'd managed to accrue a truly epic collection of chopped raw produce, each kind sorted into its own individual mountain.

J appeared to be reading poetry to Loki, not only in a foreign language, but in a foreign language so obscure Tony couldn't even guess what it might be.

Neither seemed to have heard Tony come in.

“Hey, babe,” he called out, from a reasonably safe distance, knowing as he did that Loki possessed a hair-trigger startle response--and, more to the point (pun intended), a sharp cutting utensil in his hand.

Only Loki was a million miles away, and didn't appear to have heard him.

"Hey, J," Tony added, more out of politeness than anything else, because it wasn't as if he and his A.I. friend ever really separated...

Except... except _chez_ Strange.

There, Tony realized, J hadn't piped up once through the whole adventure.

And why was that, Tony had to wonder--unvoiced criticism for an action the A.I. very much didn't approve of, or that, once inside Strange's weird house on Bleecker Street, J totally couldn't hear?

Which made going there in the first place even more stupid. That Strange wasn't a Bad Guy (with capital letters) didn't mean he had any intention of looking out for Tony's--or, most especially--Loki's interests.

Thoughtfully, Tony reached out, pilfering a thin slice of red pepper from Red Pepper Mountain.

Loki, at that point, started so badly he let out a funny little squawking sound and the knife fell out of his hand, clattering to the floor.

“Oh! Beloved!" he gasped, hand pressed to the front of his ultra-crisp blue dress shirt. "I hadn’t realized…”

Tony retrieved the knife and set it in the sink, wondering what had his honey so jumpy. When he wrapped his arms around Loki from behind and pulled him close, he felt Loki's heart beating triple-time.

“Work clothes, babe? I didn’t know you were working today. I'd have hung out in the office with you to tempt me in.  You find enough to keep you busy?”

“I aided Vanessa in a number of useful ways," Loki answered, sounding slightly breathless. "For she has much to occupy her time. I ought to work every day.” Loki somehow managed to turn in Tony's arms without so much as raising his shapely butt from the stool. “That is being responsible.”

“What’s responsible in my book, lover, is you getting enough rest and enough to eat, Lok. You look beat.”

Loki sighed, then slid his own arms around Tony's waist, pulling him closer. “It has been, as you say, 'a day.' Productive in certain ways, rather horrid in others.”

“I can relate.” Tony snuggled closer, lifting a hand to stroke Loki’s silky curls—only then did it hit him, that where those curls had once been, only short-back-and-sides remained. Loki now had Steve-hair. He had Hair of Steve.

"What the hell, babe! What the fuck happened? Did you lose a bet or something? I mean, it's your hair, but Jesus, Loki!”

“I thought it would please you," Loki answered in a flat, dull voice. "As I am Midgardian now. I must be…”

He gestured to his boring clothes and Steve-hair. “As _they_ are, so others will not think ill of me, or consider me dangerous, or… or as one who is not to be trusted.”

“Christ.” Tony pulled a bowl out of one of the cupboards, dumped the entire stack of vegetables into it willy-nilly, then shoved the whole thing into the fridge. “How 'bout we save your 'expression of angst' veggies for a later time? Let me order dinner. Anything goes. I’ll call, you change. Only something comfy, please. I'd rather not look at you and think of middle management.”

Loki glanced down at himself. “I had not thought…”

“I’m not mad, babe. Gods, no. Not in any way. I'd just rather have you be Loki, not what some asshole, or your own self-consciousness, thinks Loki should be. Okay?”

“Oh…” Loki breathed. “May I then have the noodles that taste like peanut butter, please? With both tofu and chicken?”

“You got it. Thai it is.”

Loki had dragged himself halfway up the stairs when he paused and turned again. “Could you perhaps order for me all the things—or, not _all_ , but many. Many many. I’ve very hungry.”

“All the things it is, Lok. Be back soon?”

“I have kept a log,” J said in his helpful voice, "Of the foods Loki most enjoys. I could…”

“Order away, my positronic friend. And, meanwhile, care to share any insights?”

J countered with his best, “Tut-tut, I’m not sure if I _should_ share” semi-humming noise. “Dinner is ordered, by the way.”

“Are we expecting Kurt tonight?”

“Kurt and Mr. Howlett have gone out for the evening. Mr. Barnes is currently ensconced in his room. For him, I have ordered more standard American fare, as at the moment he seems somewhat adverse to the unusual.”

Tony took a second to ponder how, all things considered, Bucky B. decided something was unfamiliar or not. Only Loki, he recalled, had also come out of his worst time with certain preferences intact, even if he'd totally lost the plot when it came _why_ he preferred those things.

“Date night?” Tony asked. "Kurt, I mean."

“More in the order of a ‘pep talk’ I should think. Kurt was somewhat upset after bringing Loki home from school. Ms. Matilda is also somewhat upset, as she blames herself for letting you down. "Again," as she expresses. And Mr. Thor…”

“Thor is right to be unhappy with me,” Loki said. He flopped down onto the couch, looking like a hot-but-miserable blue mime in a black long-sleeved tee and black leggings. “Everyone is right to be upset with me. Why can I never do the right thing? Also, how can I have eaten so many cookies, and also crackers and cheese at Steve’s flat, and still be hungry?”

“Lok. I don’t mean this to sound condescending, but maybe take a breath?”

Loki pulled his legs up into a perfect lotus position, closed his eyes and breathed, out-in, out-in, a few times.

“Better?” Tony sat beside him on the couch, rubbing the nearest of his honey’s legging-covered knees.

Loki shook his head. “Not in any way.”

“It usually doesn't help me either," Tony admitted. “Plus, being told to 'take a breath' tends to kinda piss me off."

"I am not offended," Loki answered. "As it is often said, 'It's the thought that counts,' and so, I appreciate the thought."

"So, wanna tell me how much you know? I assume you eavesdropped on the meeting? How about Bruce’s and my little expedition—which I already regret, by the way.”

Loki nodded. A frown overtook his mouth, and he glared down into his own lotus-positioned lap.

“And?”

“I have spoken with your Dr. Strange, who seems both tedious and self-absorbed, and said that I will attempt to learn from him, although our Crafts come from entirely different traditions, and are in no way compatible. Since you wish it, however, and took pains to arrange for my tutelage, I will attempt to learn from him, just as I attermpt to speak as others speak, and to dress as others dress, and to wear my hair as other Midgardian males wear their hair. I made efforts also, today, to speak to Steve with respect, and also, I hope, in ways that appeared both wise and restrained, and in all ways attempt not to bring shame unto our household, though I do all so terribly, terribly badly, and have shamed Kurt in front of his classroom of future healers, and have also made Thor distrustful of me, for I have overreacted and allowed Kurt to bamf me out of Ms. Matilda’s car, and also threw up under a tree. And I did not mean to injure those terrible men, who would harm James, but indeed I did.”

“That’s a lot of stuff,” Tony said. "Though the dude is really, really not 'my' Dr. Strange."

Loki rubbed his eyes with one hand, his face now turned completely away. Tony snagged his free hand before it could flail out of reach.

“This breathing you suggested truly appears to have been of little use. And why, _why_ will no one consult me before committing to courses of action intended for ‘my own good?’”

“He has a point,” J put in, dry-voiced.

“You have more than a point, Lok. If I was worried, I should have run it by you. Not the rest of the team. You.”

"Yes," Loki said.

"Yes?"

"Yes, you ought to have, as you say, 'run it by me.' Inexperienced I may be, in the ways of your world, yet I am an adult. I have autonomy."

It wasn't like Loki to be either so forceful or to the point. Oddly, Tony found himself happy to see that reaction--Loki standing up for himself, being his own man.

"Absolutely, babe," he said, "And good for you."

"Furthermore, I refuse to wear such hideous clothing again, however office appropriate."

"Fair enough," Tony told him. "You do you."

A little sizzle of green and gold light and the Steve-hair vanished, replaced by luxuriant below-the-shoulder curls. Loki glared at him in full defiant mode for a long, long minute before his face softened again.

"Sometimes," he admitted, unfolding his long legs, "I find it hard to be me. I want to please all, yet please no one."

"You know," Tony told him, "You don't have to 'please all.' People who make that a condition of friendship pretty much suck. You're fine. You're Loki--and I'm pretty damn fond of Loki. Ditch Strange, if you want. I shouldn't have contacted him in the first place without your consent. I also should have told the team to go to hell. Fuck, Lok, you can ditch the office too if it makes you crazy."

"I do enjoy the office at times. At least, I enjoy the company of Pepper and Vanessa. I don't..." Loki paused, a semi-frowny expression on his face, as if he was carefully weighing his words. "I do not--and please don't take this as criticism, beloved--that is, unless I am designing items for you, to be pleasing to the eye--I don't often enjoy the work."

"Then you visit the office when you want. Drop in whenever. Otherwise, concentrate on your art. Concentrate on what _you_ want. If I want something pleasing to the eye, I'll run it by you, if the project appeals, go for it. Otherwise, feel free to decline."

"You are kind." Loki slid down, resting his head on Tony's shoulder, careful, as always, with the horns. "As ever, you are kind to me. For that, and for many others reasons, I love and esteem you greatly."

"Babe," Tony answered, "I love and esteem you too."


	9. Just You Wait, 'enry 'iggins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki prepares for his first lesson with Dr. Strange. Wong is amused, Strange... not so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _Just You Wait, Henry Higgins_ " is a song from the 1956 Lerner and Loewe musical, _My Fair Lady_ , based on George Bernard Shaw's play _Pygmalion_ (based in turn on the story of Pygmalion and Galatea in _Book X_ of Ovid's narrative poem _Metamorphoses_ , in which a sculptor falls in love with his own creation). The song appears at a point in the story at which the heroine, Cockney flower-seller Eliza Doolittle is less than pleased with the education she's receiving from her tactless and condescending teacher, Prof. Higgins, and plans several dreadful fates for him. "Just you wait, 'enry 'iggins, just you wait," Eliza sings. "You'll be sorry but your tears 'll be too late."
> 
> "Ruh-roh," is uh-oh (meaning, basically, "no good can come of this") in what my daughter would call "Scooby Doo Language," because certain Great Danes, although able to speak, start every word with "R."
> 
> " _In the Sweet By-and-by_ " (written in the late 19th century, lyrics by S. Fillmore Bennett and music by Joseph P. Webster) and " _Flow gently, Sweet Afton_ (words written in the mid-1700s Scottish poet Robert Burns and set to the traditional tune " _Afton Water_ )" are somewhat old fashioned Christian Protestant hymns. "Flow gently, Sweet Afton" is really what I'd describe as a hymnish-sounding song, since the lyrics describe a river in Scotland rather than anything religious. The tune " _Afton Water_ " is most commonly associated with the Christmas Carol, " _Away in a Manger_."
> 
> "shade"=a sometimes subtle (sometimes not so much) insult

* * *

Tony exited the bathroom mostly blind, as usual, still toweling his wet hair and convinced (also as usual) that no vicious, low-lying door-edges or furniture legs lay in wait for his bare and vulnerable toes. He (also also as usual) continued to believe, all evidence to the contrary, that he wouldn't actually slam into any large, stationary bruise-causing objects on his way across the room--or, at least, that if he started to do so, J the Omniscient (or, at least, Observant) would bestir himself to issue a warning  before it actually happened.

Which J did do, in a manner of speaking, by asking, in a rhetorical sort of way, "How, indeed, have you managed to reach the age of fifty years lacking the self-discipline to finish with your hair, hang up the towel neatly, and emerge from the bathroom like a normal person?"

Tony dropped the towel on the floor just to show who was boss (J.A.R.V.I.S., obviously, but he liked to pretend). Without several centimeters of plushy-but-wet toweling muffling his hearing, he managed to detect that his closet seemed to be humming.

Which was to say, Tony suspected, that _Loki_ was humming. At least it sounded like Loki, in that Loki had a pleasant way of humming, and the sound coming from behind the closed doors struck him as undeniably pleasant, being low, and tuneful, with an appealing furry undertone that made his fortunately-unstubbed toes tingle.

Along with all that, naturally, was the certainty that he knew one person, and one person only, who'd dress in a closet--even a generously-sized walk-in closet--with the doors closed.

And, okay, maybe doing so was a little bit weird, but Tony suspected that, up in the Golden City, Loki had possessed not merely a hum-drum walk-in closet, but a whole room (or rooms) devoted entirely to dressing, and that even without functional memories, some part of his brain drove him in that direction, just by instinct, the same way he'd come out his bad time knowing how to eat, and dress himself... and other stuff.

That being the case (and lacking an _actual_ room in which to dress his princely self), Tony believed Loki had earned every right to put his clothes on in any manner or location he chose. So there. 

The humming continued, slightly louder, and now with the occasional phrase thrown in for good measure, among them being, so far as Tony could make out through the louvered doors, “ _Just You Wait!_ ” and _"Too late!_ "

Abruptly, those same doors flung themselves open dramatically. Tony could tell Loki hadn't touched them (with his hands, at least) because his honey was not only parked a couple meters away, but actually had his back to them.

“Babe, are you…?” Tony began, then found himself momentarily distracted by both the shapeliness of his honey’s leggings-clad ass, and by the smooth expanse of bare blue back rising above their waistband.

“Am I what?” Loki turned, in the uniquely fluid, "Did I actually see him turn or just imagine it?" way only he seemed to possess.

Tony wouldn't exactly complain about the front view, either.

“Uh… singing show tunes?” he finished lamely.

“Would I sing showtunes?” Loki asked, in his own particular equally-unique non-answery way. He paused to pull a black t-shirt over his head, clearly not any old Fruit of the Loom sold-in-a-three-pack-at-Walmart kind of tee, either, but the type a stylish guy might pick up at the kind of Gentleman's Boutique he himself avoided in general, mostly because, despite his immense wealth and relative fitness, they made him feel not only awkward and slightly on the old side, but also desperately uncool.

“Let’s pretend you wouldn't.” Tony plunked himself down on the edge of the bed to watch as his fiance went full-on rock-and-roll right there in front of him, slipping silver rings onto both his horns and fingers, and even applying an artful touch of guyliner in front of the mirror. A just-the-right- amount-of-oversized-and-distressed leather jacket completed the picture, also serving to disguise Loki’s still-small-but-now-definite tummy-bump.

Loki studied himself from several angles, seeming alternatively pleased and distressed by the view.

“If I may voice an opinion?" Tony asked.

"Always," Loki answered, his eyes bright, but his smile slightly tremulous.

"Okay, then, babe--take it from me, you look hot as fuck.”

"And 'hot as fuck' is...?"

"A good thing. A very good thing," Tony assured him. “Where are we going this fine day, if I might ask? I know you don't have class--are you meeting Athena? Hanging with the beautiful people? Indulging in a little recreational shopping?"

“This...” Loki sneaked a last glance at the mirror, giving his image a slight, considering frown as he steered away from Tony's question. “I couldn’t fit into my jeans this morning. Are the leggings too…?” He made a hand gesture that looked a little bit like a baby bird managing to achieve flight, but actually meant (as far as Tony could make out), "too much, too over the top?"

“Remember the ‘hot as fuck’ comment?”

"In answer to your question, Athena is required to work this morning but, as you say, I do not, indeed, have class--at least, not class of the usual sort, with Mr. Tobit." Loki smiled (still slightly shaky), laughed, bent down to kiss Tony (complete with tongue, and not shaky at all), and was gone before he could quite catch his breath.”

"Was that laugh evil?“ Tony asked J after Hurricane Loki had breezed off on his way. "I think it might have sounded evil."

"Loki was rather nervous this morning, especially upon rising," J reported, using his best stuffy butler voice. "Ms. Matilda, I understand, will be driving him to Greenwich Village. Specifically, to 177A Bleecker Street."

"Seriously? The full-on rock star look wasn't for me, or Lok's art school buddies, but for Steve Strange?"

"So it appears," the A.I. answered. Being an A.I., he didn't actually break into cackles of evil laughter, though his tone, even in that single word, held a strong--almost undeniable--undercurrent of snicker.

Tony couldn't help himself--he had to laugh too, just like J hadn't. And laugh. Then laugh a little more."

"Ruh-roh," he finally gasped, when he could catch his breath sufficiently. "Not sure I'd want to be Steve 'May You Live in Interesting Times' Strange this morning. Has my baby forgiven me yet for meddling, or is this his way of saying he has so very much _not_ forgiven me yet for meddling?"

"He's forgiven you entirely," Kurt answered, opening the door a crack and popping his head in. "He also fully intends to learn whatever Dr. Strange is able to teach him, given that they're men of very different philosophies and disciplines. At the same time..." Both the German's smile and his eyes looked especially bright that A.M. "There's a change in him this morning. Our Loki will not be beaten down, or crushed. He'll learn, but he won't be made inferior. And he says..." Kurt's smile didn't fade, but it did shift into a different gear, one that was both proud and loving. "He says, 'Don't worry, Mum, I picked up breakfast at Rosenblum's." 

"'Mum,' huh?" Tony didn't try to suppress his grin. Maybe Strange wasn't the only one who'd be living in interesting times.

* * *

Surprised and disquieted, Stephen Strange emerged early from his morning meditations. The Sanctum Sanctorum, normally, under his control, a place of deep stillness and order, felt... _off_.

_Noisy_ and off, though in truth his ears detected not the least disturbance from any region of his abode.

It annoyed him too, perhaps more than it should have, that he could summon from his usually expansive vocabulary no more precise a word. More than that, and doubtless a far more petty concern, he'd returned from the astral planes to find the seat of his trousers firmly planted on the carpet, and neither the Eye of Agamotto or the Cloak of Levitation anywhere to be seen.

And yet, he felt no disruption of the powerful wards that guarded his home, no sense of defenses being breeched, no evil, only an undeniable pulse of...

"God _dammit_ ," he spat out and, not for the first time, regretted opening his front door both to Tony Stark, and to all Tony Stark's visit entailed.

Adding to the charm of the day, he found Wong and the Norse God of Mischief (or an iteration thereof; Strange could not remember the... _being_... having appeared either so blue, or so horned, upon his last visit to New York) companionably consuming omelettes and hash browns out of pasteboard takeout containers at the kitchen table, Wong having paused momentarily to share an off-color joke with his visitor and (apparently) new friend.

The Eye of Agamotto (which ought, under no circumstances, to have parted from Strange's person), dangled in the air above their two heads, swaying gently, as if wafted on a light breeze.

The Asgardian's face turned toward him as Strange entered the room. He appeared almost--was innocent the word he wanted? Certainly younger, his green eyes wide, features unlined.

The Eye appeared to transform to a small bird--a robin, in fact, with an emphatically red breast--which fluttered across the kitchen to perch upon Strange's shoulder before resuming its usual form.

Wong giggled, and seemed impervious to Strange's subsequent glare.

Loki grinned at him sunnily--"bright-eyed and bushy-tailed," Strange's grandmother might have said, back in his long-ago Nebraska days, right before offering the god of mischief a big square of spice cake and a tall glass of milk.

Grandma Ida, his father's mother. Strange could see his younger self, small and skinny, sitting at her red-gingham-oilcloth-covered kitchen table, feet dangling while she offered up some treat, always with the glass of cold, creamy milk, from the cows she milked with her own hands, early every morning. She'd smelled of cinnamon and vanilla, and she'd sing softly as she moved about the room, old hymns with gentle tunes, " _In the Sweet By-and-by_ " or " _Flow gently, Sweet Afton_." She herself had been sweet, sweet and soft and plump, like bread after it rises but before it bakes.

Grandma Ida. Strange hadn't thought of her in years.

Loki's large green eyes regarded him with something like sympathy, and Strange realized, with a surge of irritation, that the memory had come at the Asgardian's urging, conjured from the depths of his own mind.

"I only seek to know my teacher... a little," the so-called god informed him.

"The use of magic requires discipline and focus," Strange found himself snapping at his erstwhile pupil. "A heavy consumption of food beforehand is not advisable, and..." He felt his face stiffen and his eyes bug out slightly. "Is that my Cloak of Levitation?"

The Cloak, it seemed, had not only deserted him during his time upon the Astral Planes, but had chosen to drape itself around Loki's shoulders, now and then brushing against him affectionately with parts of its hem.

"It's a lovely cloak," the Asgardian informed him, between bites. "It was only curious. Please don't be angry."

"I am not angry," Strange answered. "However, I must insist..."

"You sound a little angry," Wong opined. "Just sayin'."

The cloak fled back to Strange's shoulders with something of the air of a guilty puppy, perhaps one caught in the act of showing an excess of affection to someone other than its rightful master. 

 "I brought breakfast for you as well, Doctor," Loki said, nudging a third pasteboard carton in Strange's direction. "Good Mrs. Rosenblum cooked it especially. She is very kind and sweet." He paused, eyes seeking the Sorcerer Supreme's. "Much like your Grandmother Ida. I like the name Ida, don't you? It sounds..." Another pause, as his gaze grew distant, and his mobile mouth formed the short word: _Ida_. "It sounds sweet also, sweet and rounded, and most grandmother-like. Mrs. Rosenblum's given name is Hannah, which I also find to be a lovely name."

The Asgardian turned fully toward Strange, leaning forward slightly, his long, thin, blue fingers twined together neatly in his black-clad lap. His eyes fixed once more upon the Sorcerer Supreme's and within them Strange saw--despite Loki's unlined face and youthful attire--something akin to what he might have glimpsed within the eyes of the Ancient One, his own teacher, a depth of experience, of living through century after century, scarcely aging, refining one's power...

_Stark, you fool_ , he thought, _What have you sent to me?_

"Tony is _not_ a fool," the Asgardian protested, "And also, when I wear this form you are wrong to call me 'Asgardian.' That heritage, in any event, is only a half-part of my being. In this form, I am neither White Loki, nor of the _Aes_ , for this is the shape of my _Jötunn_ self. Tony loves and respects me, and so has sent me here. Yet I would have you know, although I do indeed consent to learn from you, Stephen Strange, as I may, I do not consent to be either diminished, or disrespected. You ought also to be aware--as perhaps my beloved Tony is not, for magic is to him a foreign thing, only lately learned of--that we are, at the very least, equals. We are also opposites, for I am of Chaos, you of Order."

"Indeed," Strange answered, concealing a certain... unease by looking down his nose at his allowed, yet not-precisely-welcomed guest.

"My Craft is born of fire and ice, and of my essence, of _seiðr,_ which weaves up the fabric of the universe," Loki continued, his voice quiet but intense, as if it drilled (as Strange had often done, in former days) through the hard shell of his skull and into the softness of his brain.

"It is not..." Loki added, straightening upon the ordinary kitchen chair, to his full and considerable height, making that common bit of wooden furniture (at least in the figurative sense) somehow into a king's throne, his earthly clothing into a king's robes. "It is not that of spells. Or gestures. Or yet some variety of extra-ordinary Midgardian mathematics contained within a golden circle."

"Indeed," Strange repeated, at an unusual loss for words. He sensed, through this speech, that Loki at least made some attempt to keep both contempt and condescension from his own voice, though in the main, he failed to do so.

Or Strange thought he failed to to so. On the main, Loki's voice was so quiet, so controlled, so pleasant in its timbre, he found himself unsure precisely _what_ he was hearing.

"Oooh!" Wong exclaimed. "Was that some _shade_ I just heard there? 'Cause it sure _sounded_ like some shade."

"Not at all," Loki responded. "I _will_ learn from you, Dr. Strange. I will most _certainly_ learn from you."

To Strange, the sometime-god's words sounded vaguely threatening.

"Never, good Doctor," Loki responded politely, having clearly plucked--with no effort whatsoever--the thought from Strange's mind. "No, indeed. For you are my honored teacher, and I your pupil." His eyes, green as emeralds, and of depths unfathomable, flickered, and then he smiled again, his expression once more sunny, innocent, devoid of darker purpose. "Now won't you eat your omelette before it gets cold? It is neither a food of Faery, nor of Hades, but only of a fine Manhattan deli. It will not bind you, or bring you harm. See how your kind friend has eaten?"

_My kind friend is an idiot_ , Strange thought, rather wishing, at that moment, for Wong to be as adept as their visitor seemed to be at perceiving the contents of his mind..

Loki, in response, laughed aloud. 


	10. When One Door Closes Another Door Opens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dr. Strange's plan to instruct Loki in the art of meditation goes awry, resulting in a perfect storm of things not going the way anyone expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title comes from Alexander Graham Bell, "the father of the telephone" (or at least the holder of the first telephone patent). The entire quote is actually: "When one door closes another door opens, but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us."
> 
> The name of Dr. Strange's house, the "Sanctum Sanctorum," is a Latin translation of a Hebrew phrase meaning "Holy of Holies," which, in religious terms, refers to the most sacred place in the Jewish temple or, more mundanely, can mean a particularly private or secret place). The eternally growing and changing mansion stands at 177A Bleecker Street, on the corner of Bleecker Street and Fenno Place in the heart of Greenwich Village, and is the seventh structure (note the magically significant number) to be built on that location. The land itself is a meeting place for a series of "dragon leylines," conduits of magical force that run through the earth. This location, and the six previous buildings built upon it, have a storied and not-always-savory history. The land itself served as the mystical binding-place of an ancient chaos-being named Tyanon and, later, as a mass grave for both the the destitute and deceased inmates from New York's first penitentiary, Newgate Prison. Earlier structures (all six of which eventually burned to the ground) housed a Satanic cult that practiced human sacrifice, provided a flophouse for beatniks, held a notoriously decadent speakeasy, served as a convent, and provided a lair for a villainous Puritan witchfinder who tortured immigrants in the basement. Not surprisingly, the location had a strong reputation for being haunted, and Dr. Strange was probably able to snap it up at a below-market price.
> 
> In this context, a sigil is a symbol considered to have magical power.
> 
> The "pale, smooth-pated woman" is Dr. Strange's mentor, the Ancient One. The "woman-who-was-not-a woman" is Angrboða ("she-who-offers-sorrow").
> 
> The lotus-eaters, or lotophagi, who appear in Book IX of the _Odyssey_ , are a race of people who live on an island so covered with lotus plants that the lotus fruits and flowers serve as their primary food, causing them to spend the better part of their lives in a peaceful narcotic doze.
> 
> Dr. Strange may (or may not) be quoting Hans Gruber (the late, great Alan Rickman) from _Die Hard_ : "Hans Gruber: "When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer. The benefits of a classical education."
> 
> The globe artichoke ( _Cynara cardunculus_ var. _scolymus_ ) resembles, in Loki's words, "an alien weed," because it's a member of the thistle family.
> 
> "Warding"=magical protection
> 
> I pilfered the words of Loki's misremembered poem from W.B. Yeats magnificent 1923 sonnet " _Leda and the Swan_ ":
> 
>  
> 
> _And how can body, laid in that white rush,_  
>  _But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _A shudder in the loins engenders there_  
>  _The broken wall, the burning roof and tower..._
> 
>  
> 
> In Greek Mythology (to vastly simplify), Leda, daughter of King Thestius of Aetolia, and wife of King Tyndareus of Sparta, is raped by the god Zeus, who's assumed the form of a swan (most likely to conceal his infidelity from his wife, Hera, as is usually the case). That same night, Leda has intercourse with her human husband, and eventually, from two eggs fertilized by these two fathers, produces two pairs of twins: Helen and Clytemnestra, and Castor and Pollux. Death, destruction and mythology follows, which is also proves to be the case with Loki and Angrboða's progeny. Hint hint.
> 
> The now-familiar phrase, "fools rush in where angels fear to tread" was first coined by Alexander Pope, appearing in his 1711 poem, _"An Essay on Criticism."_
> 
> Swearing in the comic Strangeverse will never not amuse me. The "Crimson Bands of Cyttorak" is one of the Sorcerer Supreme's go-to spells, used by Strange to bind his adversaries in extra-powerful red ribbons of magical might that represent the indomitable will of Cyttorak. We actually see Strange use them on Thanos in _Infinity War_ , during the fight on Titan.

* * *

The kitchen hadn't bothered him, Loki reminded himself, therefore he could not be said to loathe _all_ of Dr. Strange's so-called " _Sanctum Sanctorum_ " (as his new teacher referred to the place, with not-unexpected pretentiousness).

The kitchen, in fact, had possessed a calm, comforting, almost jovial presence, quite like the presence of the companionable Mr. Wong, to whom Loki had taken an instant liking. Mr. Wong, in fact, reminded him somewhat of his and Tony's friend Happy Hogan: stalwart, unflappable, and appreciative of an enjoyable meal.

That being said, as he followed his supposed instructor ever upward, along a series of increasingly labyrinthine stairways and corridors, Loki found an indisputable loathing grow within him, not only of the sorcerer himself, but of his habitation.

The house _seemed_ old, but could not possibly have _been_ old, given the relative newness of the city around them. It felt... was masked the word he wanted? Deceptive, and nearly boundless, despite all Loki's eyes informed him about its shape and size.

He saw that this "Holy of Holies" was not holy at all, that somewhere below its foundations, or within the boundaries of its walls there existed something tainted, something that painted the dwelling in shades of darkness even Loki found impenetrable, filling the house with secrets he could not fully catch hold of, building doorways he suspected ought not to be opened.

Strange, with his love of Order and great conceit in his own power, would have managed to fathom none of this, Loki suspected. Perhaps he had not even noticed, but wantonly created and opened many doors of his own devising, never perceiving those that lay, dark-mouthed and waiting, all around him.

Above all that, the house smelled... peculiar. Though clean--to all external appearances, at least--though somewhat dust-ridden, the place held an odd odor beyond mere dust, a deep musk, not merely of old books, older things and a type of Craft that made little sense to Loki, breathing out century after century of mummified _wrongness_.

Breathing out an animal odor. A death odor.

This house bided its time. It waited not to be awakened, but to be aroused, goaded into action, and it came to Loki that only an utter fool would have constructed such a dwelling as this, in such a location.

He glanced sharply at Strange, wanting badly to question him.

_Can you not feel it? **How** can you not feel it?_

In that instant, Loki wished with the whole of his heart to leave both the house and its wrongness behind him, whatever promises he'd made to Tony.

The flamboyant clothing, the attitude of assurance he'd garbed himself in that morning, in preparation for this meeting, now felt like no protection whatsoever.

Cold trickles of sweat wormed down Loki's back, sweat that had nothing to do with the endless stairs he'd climbed--Strange wafted smugly on before him, borne aloft on his Cloak of Levitation--and everything to do with the unholy atmosphere surrounding him.

The air felt thick, it came to him, again not merely from the dust, but from something like sap as it flows from the heart of a living tree, yet also unlike. The more Loki pondered the sensation, in fact, the less organic, and the less alive, the thickness seemed.

It began to strike him, actually, as the opposite of life, part and parcel with the discomforting smell, and for a moment, Loki imagined himself as some unfortunate small creature, forever preserved, motionless and lost, within a prison that grew harder and harder, inexorably and inescapably, around his helpless form.

His heart seemed to have somehow wedged itself into the base of his throat, beating there in brutal choking thumps.

Loki tried to tell himself that all this was ridiculous. That it wasn't fear he felt, only nervousness, or, even less than that, a sensation such as Athena's small and particular cat, Misty, felt if one carelessly stroked her silken fur in the wrong direction, fluffing it all on end instead of to lie sleekly flat against her skin.

Loki suspected that if he himself possessed fur, as Kurt did, or even the fine hairs that grew from the skins of not only most Midgardians, but also from those of Asgardians, like his brother Thor, they would presently be standing all on end.

He glanced again at Strange, hoping against all hope to be wrong in what he felt, to be deceived, to discover his discomfort nothing more than some challenge his supposed teacher had set in motion, either to test his mettle or to deliberately unsettle his senses.

"Do...?" Loki began, then fell silent.

Strange merely looked smug, and so maybe he'd been correct in thinking this no more than a test, something to be ignored or overcome. The Sorcerer Supreme (gods, the arrogance of that title!) offered nothing by way of either instruction or explanation, and it struck Loki that he liked and trusted the physician no more than he liked and trusted his uncomfortable house.

Yet Strange, Tony had assured him, fought "on the side of the angels," which meant he acted as a force for good. Even Kurt, who'd met the doctor of old, in the course of some past adventure, had told Loki--damning Strange lightly with faint praise--that he wasn't a _bad_ man. Kurt's mouth had made a funny little twist as he spoke the words, which told Loki that his beloved friend, who rarely spoke a harsh word against anyone, also cared little for Loki's teacher.

He understood the reasons for that dislike easily enough. Kurt studied to become a physician because he hated to see suffering, because he cared deeply and completely, to an extent it sometimes nearly hurt Loki to perceive. Strange, on the other hand, had corrected the ways that mortal bodies went wrong not out of empathy, or the desire to alleviate pain, but because to do so provided an interesting puzzle, no different from a complex mathematical problem or a jigsaw of many, many pieces, and because his profession had brought to him both wealth and acclaim.

The Order he served wasn't the pleasant order of dishes neatly washed and put away on the shelf, or the way Tony kept the random bits and pieces of his inventing in nicely-labelled plastic boxes, it was the imposition of rigid rules upon the world--not Bruce and Tony's science, which was knowing and creation both, its own form of art, but shaping of the world to what Strange wished, what Strange expected, what Strange, by his will, would cause it to be.

Loki realized that he despised both the attitude and its workings, and had these lessons not been something Tony particularly desired of him, he might for that reason alone (the unpleasantness of the house aside) have swiftly removed himself from the premises, the doctor's presence, and any future contact whatsoever with either the Sorcerer Supreme or his environs.

He truly had liked the genial Mr. Wong, however, and since they'd so enjoyed their breakfast together, Loki wondered if he would sometimes consent to come out from this unpleasant place, that they might drink coffee together now and then, or try others among the vast array of omelettes or other tasty dishes that good Mr. and Mrs. Rosenblum might gladly cook for them.

Perhaps Strange's charming red cloak would also come away with him?

It popped suddenly into Loki's head, as if from nowhere, that his brother Thor had once owned a red cloak, of a brighter hue than Strange's. That it had been fashioned of soft wool, heavy and warm, and that Thor had worn it...

Loki tried to follow this thread of memory to its conclusion, but it vanished as soon as it had come, leaving behind only an image of the garment, and with that picture a sense of loss and frustration.

"What?" Strange asked sharply.

Loki forced himself to smile in return, the expression feeling hard-edged and uncomfortable on his lips.

"Your house is indeed a... singular place," he told the physician, who gave a cheerless smile of his own in return, and it struck Loki how like two wild beasts they were, baring their fangs at one another in warning, if not in outright threat.

He would not reveal to Strange, now or ever, how his thoughts often wandered, for the sorcerer would no doubt see such wanderings as weakness--as perhaps, in fact, they indeed were--yet in this way also, Loki thought, he might be seen as similar to a wild creature, that although injured will not limp, lest it betray the places in which it is vulnerable.

Neither would Loki stop even once to catch his breath. They must have climbed already the equivalent of twenty or more stories, though by its outward appearance, the house should not have risen to more than three, or four at the most. Strange, as noted, had chosen to float on before him as they climbed. Loki wondered what would happen if he called the sorcerer's charming and remarkable cloak back to him, but decided to reserve the maneuver for some future time, should Strange continue to annoy him.

Loki added to his other suspicions the idea that Strange meant to "show off"--another of Tony's terms, though his beloved might even more commonly have expressed the same idea as "get into a dick-measuring contest" ("Dick" being, he'd learned, not only a diminution of the masculine name Richard, but also a familiar term for the male organ). He suspected that the man Tony had intended to be his wise teacher saw him, rather, as a rival and intruder, though Loki meant to be neither, and sought to either impress or to intimidate him with the greatness and might of one deemed Sorcerer Supreme.

He stole a deeper look than before at Strange's thoughts, and caught, in their flickering passage, the image of a pale and smooth-pated woman. Echoes of her low and musical voice came to him _...why .. why must you... what do you seek to...?_

 _Because, Lady,_ Loki answered in his own thoughts, though he couldn't be certain if she spoke to him, or to Strange, or to some unknown other,  _He is both filled with arrogance and devoid in faith in himself. Ever he must master, subdue, prove himself the superior and another, ever, the inferior. Because he must always win._

He filed these impressions away for future reference.

After all this climbing Strange brought him at last to a chamber that outdid even his penthouse home for the plainness of its furnishings (Tony's tastes--if, in fact, his beloved had shared any part of their dwelling's decoration, an assumption Loki increasingly questioned--tended toward the "contemporary," as such designs, unadorned, and to Loki's thinking, uninteresting, with their sparse furnishings all in black or white, and too much shining metal formed into far too many spare, hard angles). The walls had been painted a cold shade of grey, and a thin mat of woven grasses covered the floor. Other than a narrow table of unembellished wood placed against the far wall, the room held not one stick of furniture.

Loki, who relished rich colors, graceful curving lines, and all things created skillfully and lovingly by hand, found the room chilly and unwelcoming--rather like the man who'd escorted him. Strange, however, had claimed that meditation and the conscious ordering of one's mind, were imperative to the practice of magic, and though Loki found himself both unwilling to accept this philosophy, and to give in to to his new teacher's demands, he asked himself, _What would Kurt do?_  as a way of overcoming his own stubborn nature, on the principle that whatever path his dear friend took in such a situation would be both right and correct.

Right and correct, he'd learned, were not always the same thing.

Kurt, also, frequently encouraged him to try new foods, and sometimes new experiences, of which this certainly appeared to be one.

"Try," Kurt would say, "If you don't try, you'll never know."

Loki had discovered this to be true of artichokes, which he found delicious, however they might resemble alien weeds. Perhaps the meditation Dr. Strange required of him might prove to be merely the artichoke of magical practice.

"Sit," Strange told him, in as cold and peremptory a manner as Loki could remember hearing, as if he was Strange's ill-trained hound, present only to be chastised.

"Where would you have me sit?" Loki asked--quite reasonably, he thought, since the room clearly contained not a single chair, or even a cushion. He seriously considered conjuring one or the other out of the air, but restrained the impulse as one Dr. Strange almost certainly would have found aggravating.

"Upon the mat," Strange replied. "In the lotus position. You _do_ know the lotus position?"

Loki searched his memory. He most clearly associated lotuses with the Lotus-eaters of the _Odyssey_ , by that premier poet of ancient times, Homer. Certainly, he could recall much talk of magic woven through the lines of that epic poem, but no particular manner of sitting, or of otherwise positioning one's body.  _Was_ there a particular posture associated with such beings, lost now to his still-often-faulty memory?

If so, Loki decided, it would most likely be a prone one, because did not the lotus make those who ate of it sleepy? And becoming sleepy, would they not wish to lie down?

In an effort to honor Tony's wishes, and irk his teacher no further, Loki first sat, as commanded, then stretched out upon the thin matting. The floor beneath felt cold, and also uncommonly hard, an unrelenting hardness that seemed to seek out each still-tender place amongst his bones, as if the very surfaces of that inhospitable house sought to convey their disapproval of his presence.

"What are you doing?" Strange snapped, his voice no longer so superior, though in large part irritated instead.

Loki explained.

Unexpectedly, something akin to a smile flickered over his teacher's lips, and he said in a dry voice, "Ah. The benefits of a Classical Education."

Mr. Wong, Loki noted, had joined them sometime during this exchange, and now leaned against a wall, his mouth curved in a wide grin.

"He's supposed to know?" Strange's companion asked, in a rhetorical fashion. Strange shot him what Tony almost certainly would have termed a "dirty look."

"Like this, Loki." Mr. Wong lowered himself to the matting, flexible despite his greater age and slight stoutness, assuming a position somewhat akin to that called "cross-legged," which Kurt had taught to Loki as one frequently assumed upon Midgard, though instead of crossing over its fellow, one leg appeared to crook beneath, and one above, the other, so that each of Mr. Wong's feet rested upon the opposite thigh.

Loki's legs remained slightly stiff at times, and also, now and then, a bit sore, but he found he could imitate his kind new acquaintance's posture easily enough. To show a willing spirit he even held his hands upright and open upon his knees, just as Mr. Wong held them.

He felt approval--from Mr. Wong, at least. From Strange he discerned only further impatience.

"Have I performed the position incorrectly?" Loki asked. He truly did wish to return to Tony with a positive report of his time with his new teacher, both in his own conduct and in what unknown things he might have learned, even though he found Strange... _strange_ , neither as genial nor as instructive as his dear Mr. Tobit, nor as affable as Mr. Wong, who was, it appeared, the doctor's friend. Rather, the sorcerer seemed to disapprove not only of Loki himself, but that he did not already possess the knowledge Strange was meant to teach him.

 "I am not of this world," Loki reminded him, making an effort to keep his tone respectful. "Neither have I memory of the life I led before I became a man of Midgard."

"He has you there, Steve," Mr. Wong interjected.

"Perhaps because you fill the office of Sorcerer Supreme, or because I am somewhat nervous and also attempting to be polite, I taste of your emotion, but not of either your knowledge or your thought. How am I meant to know what I have not yet be taught?"

"Also true," said Mr. Wong.

Strange did not answer, but instead rapidly constructed a form of shining Craft within the spaces of the air, his magic taking the shape of a circle, just as Loki's Craft sometimes formed itself to a circle, though the doctor's circle appeared, despite its shape, entirely finite, with both a definite beginning and a definite end, while Loki's circles were infinite, as the universe was infinite, encompassing all that had been, and was, and would be.

Loki considered this, as Strange expanded and manipulated the circle until it lay entirely around him. Strange meant this bit of Craft as an act of Warding, though whether to repel hostile forces or to contain Loki's own  _seiðr_ , he could not have said. The golden ring did indeed seem both constricting and disconcerting, though it also seemed to not only have no effect upon Loki's own abilities, but might easily have been breached in no less than five places and, with slightly more effort, in a dozen more. More than anything, it reminded him of his usual jeans, which he'd tried and failed to wear that very morning.

He could get into them, and even do up the zip, only they felt wrong. Unaccomodating. At least temporarily, no longer suited to him.

Loki examined the unknown characters contained within the ring, sigils unknown to him, and also the straight lines that served as its foundation.

 _Its bones_ , he thought. _Its skeleton._

Coupled with the unease already engendered by the _wrongness_ of Strange's dwelling, Loki found the image disconcerting.

These lines, golden in color, and glowing, met one another at angles, composing a geometry beyond Loki's comprehension, though it reminded him somewhat of the figures Tony would scrawl, now and then upon his transparent wall of writing, when he became too excited to merely tap his imaginings into his computer.

The writing, Tony had told him, helped him figure things out.

Strange, Loki realized, had not figured things out at all, though he believed he had. Strange truly did believe in Order, in breaking the forces of the universe to his command, in subduing both Nature and his own nature--and because of this... arrogance (Loki could think of no other word) Strange knew nothing, saw nothing.

How else could he remain unaware of the balefulness all around him, within the walls of his own home?

The small singer inside Loki's body sent out a trill of warning, _He perceives me not!_ she told him, along with other things, such as how her presence--a magical being contained within a magical being--might allow Loki to cast his magic in unforeseen directions, just as a prism (Loki had enjoyed the demonstration, though perhaps not entirely understood Tony's explanation) cast rainbows out of ordinary light.

 _Interesting_ , Loki thought--as indeed it was, though he could not for the moment see how this might affect his current situation.

"Relax," Strange commanded. "Close your eyes. Empty your mind."

Loki complied as best he could, though he found it challenging to feel both constricted and relaxed in the same moment. Gradually, however, under the influence of his teacher's sonorous voice (along with the certain knowledge that he might have--to use a metaphor of Tony's--driven a truck through any of the gaps in the Wardings with which Strange meant to contain him), the sensation of being bound seemed to ebb.

Loki's mind, of course, discarded the merest thought of emptying, ideas continuing to flare and flit, like flames, or small birds, or...

 _Or perhaps small birds made of flame?_ Loki asked himself, finding the image so charming he wanted to draw it immediately.

What was Strange saying?

His _seiðr_ wanted badly to manifest, fighting harder with every word Strange intoned, but with concerted effort, Loki controlled it.

He traveled outward, as he often did--indeed, he needed none of this preparation, this empty room or an empty mind, to slip loose from the confines of his physical body. 

In his mind, he walked beside the river--the East River, which was not, in truth, a river at all, but a salt water tidal estuary of diverse depths and untrustworthy currents. 

 _All ill things came from the East_ , Loki thought, without knowing the source of the idea, which was not meant to denigrate the eastern lands of Midgard, but rather...

But rather something distant and nearly indefinable, as in the fairy tale, _"East of the Sun, and West of the Moon_ ," meaning not some known place, readily located upon a map, but a place foreign beyond hope of understanding, frightening, unknowable and unknown.

The  _Jötnar_ , Thor had told him, came from the East. Only not, for _Jötunnheimr_ no more lay to the physical east of Asgard than the East River was a river.

So many things described wrongly, as they were not and never would be...

Loki walked by the river-that-wasn't, along the straight paths of the riverside, with its equally straight railings of wood and steel, and felt the gathering of thunder, and fate, and some other thing, an immense sorrow, a great threat...

As if compelled, he reached out, stretching his senses, stretching his Craft, into the thunder, into the sense of fate and the larger sense of threat. He knew he should not, knew with every bit of himself he should not.

And yet...

A door opened. His body (and how had he come back to his body, when just an instant before, he wandered free?) had shifted, as it _would_ shift, sometimes by his own consent, and sometimes not.

It had shifted, and he ran, not on two legs, as a man, but on four. On four slender yet powerful legs with shining hooves.

He ran, and the winds of all the Realms streamed through his long mane, and his tail, and in one moment he felt utterly free, utterly clever and triumphant and in control, then in the next utterly terrified, as the storm broke over him, dark and heavy and full of pain, and brought him crashing to the ground so violently, so unexpectedly, he could scarcely draw breath.

A door opened...

He lay in a dark place where fires burned, giving heat but no light, just as his heart burned, filled with all the rage and the hate, all the bitterness and disappointment and jealousy he had known in his long, long life.

Here, Loki discovered, he was himself and not himself, Loki but not Loki--older, harder, less loved, so full of grief he could bear only to act, but not to think, for thinking, and most especially, _remembering_ , brought too great a burden of pain.

A woman-who-was-not-a-woman lay with him there, her face, what he could perceive of it through the darkness, comely in its features yet dreadful, full of all the brutal things that filled him as well--the grief, the rage, the spite. Her hands reached out for Loki, touching him with skill, burning his skin with the same lightless fire that filled all that place, even as her thighs fell open before him.

 _No!_ Loki cried out within his mind, even as his body rose to her, as he mounted and entered her. _No! Please!_

A thread of poetry unspooled in his mind, words Loki knew well, but also knew he had not remembered correctly, not in this instance...

 _...how can body, laid in that dark rush,_  
_But feel the strange hearts beating where they lie?_

 _A shudder in the loins engenders there_  
_The broken walls, the burning bridge and towers..._

Loki gasped, the hot air searing in his lungs.

_Please, no. Oh, please, no._

A door opened...

Another time, earlier or later he could not have said. Loki lay on his side in a shaft of light, dust and the smell of hay in his nostrils, and moaned, his body once more on fire.

A door opened...

He pelted down the straight path that ran beside the East River (that misnamed river, which was not, in truth, a river at all, but a salt water tidal estuary of diverse depths and untrustworthy currents), along the straight paved path with its equally straight railings of wood and steel, and felt the gathering of thunder, and fate, and some other thing, an immense sorrow, a tremendous threat.

Within the waters, the currents roiled, no longer merely untrustworthy, but alive with something vast and angry, a being of both water and air, filled not with malice but with great rage, a rage that demanded vengeance for some long-brooded-over wrong.

There by the river, Loki stumbled, and fell to his knees, and wept, his bruised heart spilling over both with grief and a great, nearly unfathomable, sense of love, though he knew not why that might be.

 _They are coming, dearest,_ his small singer murmured within him. _They are coming. In a moment now, they will be here._

* * *

"By the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak!" Loki heard Mr. Wong exclaim, "What the actual fuck was that?"

"I know not. I know not," Loki mumbled. He lay upon the hard floor again, the matting of grass scratchy beneath his cheek, and somewhat damp. He felt profoundly sick.

"What did you see?" Strange demanded. "What did you see?"

"I know not!" Loki shouted, though he had not meant to do so. The feeling of loss nearly overwhelmed him, sorrow for some thing--gods, the frustration of not knowing so much as a syllable of its name!--once entirely dear to him, and now lost, so that only the emotion remained.

"In the water," he managed to choke out at last, even as the reek of sulfur filled the air--at which Loki's sense of desolation withdrew somewhat, for he knew Kurt had come, once again, in response to his distress.

"Baby, it's okay." Tony's hand touched his cheek, wiping away tears Loki didn't know he'd shed. "You're okay," he repeated, in the hoarse, slightly panicked voice he used when he didn't know if things really would go well, or if he only wished that to be the case. "You're fine. You're okay."

"We heard you," Kurt said to him. He sat cross-legged beside Loki (in the traditional way, rather than that of the lotus which Mr. Wong had taught him). With gentle hands, he lifted Loki's head into Tony's denim-clad lap, brushing Loki's sweat-soaked hair back from his face, the unusual texture of his palms at once slightly prickly, yet pleasant against his skin.;

"How did you enter here?" Strange snapped. He was a man of imperiousity, Loki considered, much given to snapping. He ought not, however, to snap at Kurt, who was good in every way.

"Semi-magical being," Kurt replied, in his usual even-tempered manner. "We have actually met, Dr. Strange, and fought the undead together. One would think you'd remember."

Strange's icy eyes narrowed. "The German. The mutant. The demon's son."

Loki felt from Kurt something akin to an eye-roll, though his yellow eyes, of course, revealed nothing.

"Don't be an asshole, Strange," Tony--quite capable of snapping in his own right--snarled at the sorcerer.

"Do you think you can sit now, _lieber Freund_?" Kurt asked, sliding a powerful arm behind Loki's back. "Do you need something to eat?"

Loki heard rustling, the sound of Kurt reaching into his messenger bag for the snacks he routinely carried, entirely for Loki's benefit.

Between them, he and Tony lifted Loki until he sat upright, the plain room whirling for an instant, though it soon steadied, as if the presence of those he loved best gave him ballast. He gnawed on the protein bar his dear friend passed to him, and when it had been consumed, lifted his chin in order to meet Strange's cold eyes.

"It was in the East River," Loki told him. "Near Roosevelt Island, and it was mighty, yet also..." He turned his face first to his dear friend's, then to that of his beloved, needing to fill his sight with the images of those  who would believe and trust him.

"On it, Steve," said Mr. Wong, and stepped through a green circle into some other place.

"You..." Kurt raised his chin too, his eyes flickering at Strange, now yellow, now orange, now nearly red. "May be the Sorcerer Supreme," he said, still in his kind voice. "But you are also arrogant, and something of a fool, as in, 'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' You misunderstand Loki's nature, and you've put him in danger. If left up to me, he won't come here again."

"Ditto on that from me," Tony put in, wrapping his arms around Loki, pulling him so close that Loki's skin vibrated with the frantic thud of his beloved's heart. "Bad idea. One of many."

Strange ignored Tony's words entirely, asking Kurt, instead, "And who are you to decide, demon's son?"

"Uh... kinda people who care about Loki?" Tony interrupted. "People who love him? For reals, forget about all this. Again, bad idea. Never should have suggested it."

"It's sad, don't you think," Kurt answered, his flame-like eyes still fixed upon the sorcerer's "That someone born half a demon should have more caring in his heart than a man charged with watching over all the world?"

"Caring is a weakness," Strange replied. "Caring too greatly merely prevents one from doing what sometimes must be done."

"Yeah, you keep telling yourself that." Tony's voice remained light, but beneath that tone burned a fury Loki had scarcely heard from him. "See how far it takes you. And, speaking of taking, Kurt, think you can bamf both of us home from here?"

"I can," Kurt answered quietly. "And I will.

With that, he enfolded them both with his arms, all softness and hardness at once, and in a burst of particularly noisome smoke, carried them away from Strange's house. 


	11. Which Treats of a Mirror, and of Its Splinters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All Loki's asking, is for a little respect (and possibly some alone time in which to process)--which may not be the best of ideas, given the circumstances.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter shares a title with Story One of Hans Christian Andersen's 1845 fairy tale, _The Snow Queen_.
> 
> I'd always assumed that the "slack" in the phrase "cut him some slack" had to do with a slack, or loosely held, rope. It turns out that, instead, the expression most likely comes from the world of cooperage (barrel-making). It seems that coopers cut two types of staves, the wooden slats that make up the sides of the barrels--"tight staves" for barrels meant to hold liquids and "slack staves" for barrels intended for dry goods. Tight staves were the superior, more expensive product, the slack staves less expensive and less precisely cut, so by "cutting slack" we're expressing a willingness to put up with something that's less than perfect.
> 
> The word "jaunt" first appeared as a synonym for teleportation in Alfred Bester's 1957 science fiction novel, _The Stars My Destination_.
> 
> French artist Gustave Doré (1832-1883)was known for his paintings, engravings and illustrations. Loki is thinking of the engravings he completed in 1866 as illustrations for John Milton's epic poem, _Paradise Lost._
> 
> Loki is referencing the painting _The Fall of the Rebel Angels_ , complete in 1562 by Dutch painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder (born circa 1525-1530, died 1569).
> 
> _The fall of Icarus_ (2014) is an illustration by contemporary Canadian artist René Milot.

* * *

_Why? Why must you do that?_ Loki wanted to ask, as the familiar walls of the bedroom he shared with Tony rose up around the three of them, Kurt setting them down with such gentleness they might never have moved from one place to the next.His initial gladness to be with his dear ones, to be loved and protected by them, gave way to a certain resentment _._ This wasn't being protected, this was being _coddled._  

_Am I a child, to be shielded from experience? Or a fair maiden in a tower, waiting always to be saved?_

Loki fought down his exasperation, concealed it, not wishing to hurt Kurt's feelings. He recognized--he truly did--that his dearest friend had only meant to be kind, and that there had indeed been many times he'd actually needed support, and Kurt had stood firmly by his side. More than that, what was Kurt's essential nature, if not  to nurture and defend? Surrounded by individuals of nearly godlike powers, it had always been his particular duty to protect the innocent, to snatch the helpless from the jaws of danger, conveying them safely out of harm's way.

The times that Kurt had failed in that duty, through no fault of his own, lingered as wounds to his ever-tender heart. The memories of those he could not save, despite his best efforts, haunted him always. Kurt would not, perhaps could not, as Tony might have phrased it, "cut himself some slack."

Neither did Kurt's religion, as Loki perceived it, make such unintended failures any lighter to bear.

Because of this, and because he loved Kurt, Loki said nothing, however irked he felt, and kept his opinions firmly sequestered, not allowing them to creep into parts of his mind where they might easily be read.

And Tony? Tony was not a fool, and yet the particular phrase, "Reckless Abandon," might have been coined expressly to describe his beloved's ordinary state of being. It wasn't that Loki expected Tony to know better, or resented his interference, exactly--he only wanted Tony to respect him, to see him as strong, confident, and skilled, as Tony himself was (most times) strong, confident and skilled. He wished to be his partner's equal, not be treated as childlike, or fragile, or worse...

Loki hunted for a word or a phrase that might fully convey what he felt, his consciousness skimming lightly through the minds of his friends within the tower, in search of something that might fulfill his need.

Clint provided the exact phrase he sought: "ticking time-bomb."

Loki did not wish for Tony, or Kurt, or anyone he cared for, to see him as such a thing, as something explosive, primed and ready to burst into a million pieces.

Yet he feared that they saw him as precisely that, and so, in their misguided love, had once again swept in to save him from himself, never mind that, left to his own devices, he might actually have chosen (after being allowed a moment or so to catch his breath) to linger for some little while, for all that he found Strange's dwelling repellent, and the doctor himself cold and arrogant, the better to understand what he'd seen.

Putting his distaste aside, he might even have consulted with Strange, and with the far more benevolent  Mr. Wong, as to the meaning of his vision.

No matter how threatening the images that invaded his mind had seemed, it struck Loki now, that threat had not been directed against him. Nowhere in that flood of fury, love and loss had come any sense of danger to his own being. Rather, it had been...

Gods, he needed to think! To be by himself, and to ponder all this, and perhaps to ask some advice of J.A.R.V.I.S., who alone among his friends never showed the least sign that emotion clouded his wisdom.

Perhaps, in that moment, Kurt indeed caught some taste of his thoughts, or at least of Loki's irritation, for with a grin and a light shiver, he immediately released the tight embrace he'd kept around Loki's body. The light of his eyes flashed upward, and he studied Loki's face, his features showing, still, no hurt, only an expression of profound puzzlement.

"All is well," Loki murmured. "Truly, Kurt, all is well. Only that house--that dreadful house--has..." He sought a word that would explain both his standoffishness and his need to be solitary.

"It has soiled me," he concluded. "I am _soiled_ , and I would be clean again."

Kurt's puzzlement changed to the warmest of smiles, " _Ach_ , I understand entirely, _teurer Freund_ \--it is a nasty place, and the atmosphere does seem to cling. If I didn't have class this afternoon, and my fur only dried more quickly, I might seek out a shower myself."

"You understand me, as always," Loki answered--not quite a lie, because Kurt nearly always _did_ understand him better than any other, and therefore the words _were_ true in a general sense, if not precisely accurate in this particular situation. Surely it was only a fib, a white lie, a slight omission.

He didn't like to lie to Kurt, though, in however small a way. To do so made Loki feel even dirtier than before.

Full now of all sorts of discontent, he turned to Tony instead. Hoping for a distraction of some sort, Loki instantly found one. He'd entirely forgotten how miserably his love reacted to teleportation. Tony swayed in place, both eyes clenched shut, his face as green as that soup of dried peas that Bruce had cooked for them on one occasion, a soup that Loki could not by any means force himself to eat--its color having struck him as simply too revolting.

That particular shade of green worked no better as a hue for Tony's skin.

Loki thought of making a joke, pointing out the ease with which Tony might soar above the city in one of his remarkable suits, yet became deathly ill from a simple jaunt of a few blocks up or downtown--only his beloved truly appeared so miserable he hadn't the heart to do so. Instead, he cupped Tony's face between his hands and pressed a soft kiss to his sweat-damp brow, slowing Tony's pulse to its ordinary moderate rate, soothing the nerves within the spirals of his ears until his balance was restored and he no longer felt sick, only a little sleepy.

"Miracle worker," Tony rasped, staggering forward a step. The top of his head bumped Loki's chest, and he clutched at Loki's wrists. "Hoo-whee."

Loki planted a second kiss upon the crown of his love's head. "A horribly _grubby_ miracle worker, if I am indeed such a thing," he responded, feigning a laugh, "And one that must, this very instant, become clean again."

"My picky prince," Tony slurred, as Loki steered him toward the bed, where he flopped bonelessly atop the covers, in what appeared to be perfect content.

"Would you have me any other way?" Loki tossed over his shoulder as he sailed off to the relative privacy of the en suite bathroom, every line of his body set to convey nothing but ease and good humor to any who might observe him.

_As if I have not seen what I have seen, or felt what I have felt,_ he thought with a touch of bitterness. As if he had never entered that terrible _Domus Desecratum_ , or whatever the proper Latin designation for such a debased and desecrated place might be.

Loki thought of how Strange had sought to bind him, and how the forces of that place, that the Sorcerer So-called Supreme, had beat upon and sought to twist all his defenses.

He felt his face twist too, then--though whether with fury or with the threat of tears, Loki could not have said.

"Loki," J called out quietly, the moment the sturdy door snicked shut. 

Loki leaned against it, drawing in deep shuddering breaths, telling himself, _I will not weep. I will not. What reason do I have for weeping?_

"Loki," J repeated, his voice pitched too softly, still, for any but Loki to hear, its tone terribly kind. "Son, don't think, only answer--what is it that you've seen?"

Loki sought to respond but could not, the words sticking in his throat until he felt he could scarcely breathe. Instead, he stripped off his clothing, so carefully chosen only a brief time before, with something close to anger, no longer able to bear its filthy touch against his skin. Though the room remained warm, he found himself shivering in sharp, painful shudders.

He waved a hand toward the taps of the bath, causing water to flow, steam wafting in an instant to blur the many mirrors of that generously-sized room. Loki controlled that steam, concentrated and shaped it, until the form rippled, all curves and tendrils, before his stinging eyes.

"Is that a dragon, Loki?" J asked of him, in the same kind voice.

Loki shook his head, his loose hair rising now, too, in tendrils, sparks shooting between the strands, between the wisps of the steam, like so many falling stars. His lips formed a word, but because that word had no sound behind it to carry it forth, he felt only the shape of it, the firm "W" at its start, and then an exhalation.

"Worm?" J asked, evidently confused, and thinking, no doubt of the small, pink creatures that tunneled through gardens, enriching the soil.

"Wyrm," Loki repeated, which within his mind conjured up visions of mythical beasts, like serpent and dragon combined, so vast in their length and girth they might easily encircle the entire world.

He ground the heels of his hands into his temples, where a throbbing pain had started as the fragmented sections of his brain tried frantically to connect, to build images and ideas with faulty tools and materials that no longer consented, always, to follow his bidding.

Loki shivered harder, the blunted points of his claws pressing into his scalp until the skin tore.

"Loki," J called to him. "Loki, please, be calm."

"How can I be calm?" Loki cried in anguish, feeling only the detritus of Strange's terrible house burrowing into his skin, and the aftermath of the Sorcerer Supreme's rigid magic, as Strange attempted to shape and control him, and his vision of the creature as it moved beneath the waters of the East River, that as Loki touched it felt dreadful, and destructive, and... and...

The wyrm-form he'd conjured in the air blew apart into tatters. The mirror cleared, then darkened, and out of that darkness rose a face, indistinct at first, then sharpening into the visage of a woman--a woman whose face, on its right side, was lovely and proud, with high cheekbones and skin as smooth and fair as White Loki's skin had once been. Black hair, long, thick and curling as his own hung down to where her shoulder surely must have been, vanishing then into the dark at the mirror's edge.

On the left side... Oh, gods!

J.A.R.V.I.S., at one time or another, had shown Loki pictures of ancient mummies, and whether from the tombs of Egypt or the peat-bogs of Britain, one had struck him as much like the other, and all had filled him with a variety of squeamish horror--the dessicated lips drawn back from stained and too-prominent teeth, the collapsed and shrunken noses, the taut, leathery eyelids scarcely covering the emptiness where eyes had once shone, the faded, lifeless hair.

The remaining side of the woman's face appeared much the same, except that a cold light glimmered, star-like in the otherwise vacant eye socket, and the skin, instead of dry and brown, was blue-gray and appeared faintly moist, as if its own had lain a long while is some damp, unwholesome place. The hair on this side hung down as long as it had on the other, but it grew in sparse clumps from her withered scalp, and had no luster to it, only a limp whiteness discolored, here and there, with patches of yellow in a shade that reminded Loki of urine.

His stomach clenched when she smiled at him out of the depths of the glass, the right side of her face both lovely and loving, the left side shifting into a malevolent sneer. A dark shape moved behind her in the darkness, revealing nothing to Loki but a sense of its motion and a flash of long, sharp, ice-white teeth.

_Dreadful, and destructive, and.._. the thought repeated in Loki's head, his mind filling in, at last, the word he'd struggled so desperately to find.  _Dreadful, and destructive, and... beloved?_

Somehow, despite all the mirror showed him, it was neither horror or disgust that flooded his thoughts, but deep pity and desperate love.

Loki fell to his knees on the cold tile, fell hard enough to bruise his skin. Hot tears scalded his eyes, and, at the same time, hotter blood burst from his nose, dripping down his bare chest, as rage and sorrow burned through the whole of his body.

Yet those emotions weren't for Narfi or Vali, the children Loki knew had been his, loved and lost within such a short time. Neither was it for sweet Sigyn that he grieved, nor for Frigga, who had been his mother, but lingered now within his mind only as a breath of perfume, the gentle touch of a hand, a brief flash of sunlight.

"Oh, my lost ones!" Loki cried out, half despite himself. "Oh, my bright and beloved ones, where have you been?"

His own words shocked him. Surely these were only those legendary creatures he'd read of in books, the Monstrous Children of Loki, those adversaries of the gods who engendered the end of Asgard and all worlds. In his vision, he had visited their conception, seen the icy, cavernous dwelling of the giantess Angrboda and the bleak, bitter lovemaking--if it could even be called such, for in it he'd sensed nothing of the tenderness and joy he shared with Tony--and also...

He knew this, knew it as surely as he lived and breathed, that the Loki he'd seen there had not been him, or even White Loki, his self of earlier, yet still recent times, but another, older and more broken Loki. A Loki devoid of hope, a Loki worn away to nothing but fury and an unquenchable need for revenge.

Out of that bitterness, rage and need, the three had been given life.

"Hela," Loki breathed, feeling his own small singer shift uneasily within him. "Fenrir.  And..." He considered the powerful, slow movements he'd sensed beneath the waters of the East River, the huge swimmer there he'd both seen and not seen. "And... and Jörmungandr?"

Why had they come here, to Earth, and to this city?

A fist pounded on the door--Tony's fist? It nearly had to be Tony's--and Loki thought he heard his betrothed's voice as well, though small and distant.

"Lok? Loki, what the fuck? Open the fucking door!"

The mirror darkened further, the pale woman, half-dead and half-alive, retreated, and with her, the dark, scarcely-seen figure by her side.

With their disappearance, the pipes of the bathroom burst one by one, each crying out with its own voice,  like the individual pipes of an antique organ, like the organ at the weathered old church where Kurt hurt Mass.

Water sprayed madly, drenching ceiling, walls and floor. Stunned, frozen in place, Loki made no move to quench it, even as the hot liquid burned his bare skin and J's voice, in the midst of calling out to him some warning or exhortation, died in a sputter and hiss.

The mirrors shattered then, into a veritable of shower of needles and knives, and all Loki could think of-- when his stupefied mind managed to catch hold of any thought at all, was the demon-made looking-glass in the story of _The Snow Queen_ , the broken shards that turned hearts to ice, and made every good thing look worthless and every terrible thing impossible not to see.

Loki's knew his own heart could not have possibly turned to ice, for a frozen heart would not ache, or burn, as his did when he realized that every shard now appeared to be aflame, and in each blazing fragment, he glimpsed bodies falling, on fire, in no way like the decorous and neatly-delineated fallen angels of Gustave Doré or Pieter Brueghel, or the handsome Icarus of René Milot, but twisted in agony and helpless with fear.

In the distance, a city shaped like a golden mountain crumbled within a ring of capering flames.

Loki could not recall the name of this city, though he knew it ought to have been as familiar to him as his own.

"No," he breathed, his voice raw now with the horror of what he witnessed. "No, not this. Never this."

Loki had no idea why the mirror showed him what it showed him, or the significance of the razed city, or what had caused the people to fall.

He knew even less what brought him to cry out, "Ah, gods, no! I didn't do it! It wasn't me!" 

 


	12. A Visitor from On High

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki is stressed, but maybe not as stressed as he will be when he eventually meets Steve's latest "puppy."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tony's quoting one of the Grim Reaper's lines from the 1983 film, _Monty Python's Meaning of Life, Part VII: Death_. It was the salmon mousse!
> 
> The phrase "on the fritz" is now mostly used to refer to a machine that's not working properly, though when the phrase first popped up in the U.S. around 1902, it could refer to just about anything--machines excluded--from a bad marriage to a play that bombed. No one really knows the origin, though some have suggested that it refers to the mischievous Fritz of _The Katzenjammer Kids_ , a comic strip widely circulated in newspapers from 1897 on. The shift in meaning from situations to machines might be explained, as poet John Ciardi thought, by the similarity in sound between "fritz" and the alarming _pfzzt_ noise that bad electrical wiring tends to make just before meltdown.
> 
> In the Star Trek universe, a tricorder is the device (strongly resembling those newfangled mid-60's cassette player/recorders, only with a shoulder strap) used for scanning, data analysis, and to record data.

* * *

The maelstrom ended. Just like that, leaving Loki in a once-pleasant bathroom that had now become something akin to a swamp, a morass of spouting and sloshing water, chunks of shattered mirror and tile, and shredded linens. The paintwork, that had been a soothing gray, now showed discolored  patches of dripping wetness and the flame-shaped marks of smoke.

Behind him, the door stuck, but when some foot delivered to its panels a determined kick, it flew open, striking the wall with a dull boom.

"I..." Loki began. He felt drained. Utterly drained, as if he lacked the strength to rise out of the minor flood eddying around his thighs.

"Whoa." Tony's voice. Naturally, it would be Tony's voice. "Double whoa."

Slowly and wearily, Loki rose to his feet. He felt odd, shaky and awkward, deeply embarrassed as well. He waved a hand and the pipes stopped spurting and healed themselves, metal flowing into metal. A second gesture and the water dried. The mirrors joined together in mid-air, applying themselves, intact, to the walls once more--walls that had been restored to their ordinary clean, warm gray.

"Okay," Tony said, dry-voiced. "So I guess I can cancel that call to maintenance?"

"Beloved, I..."

"You might want to shrink down a little before you leave the room, Lok, considering you're currently like nine feet tall. You're gonna bonk your head when you try to get through the door."

No wonder, then, that he'd felt awkward, if he had grown nearly a yard in height. Loki reached into himself, fumbling for that singular spot that controlled his shape-shifting ability until he'd managed to shrink himself to his usual size. To do so hurt, and after left his head pounding, as if a thick wire of pain had been strung across his brain, from the base of one horn to the other. His eyeballs hurt too.

Worse than that, he found himself incapable of accessing his beloved's thoughts, and Tony's words and tone of voice revealed nothing. Had Tony meant to be unkind? Was he angry, or had Loki's own senses merely become so overwhelmed that he'd lost all ability to separate one emotion from the next.

His earlier irritation had vanished as if it had never been. Now he longed for soft words and gentle caresses, but had not the heart to ask for them.

"Magic," Tony said, and slumped on the edge of the bed, head down, forearms propped on his knees. "Fucking magic."

"I did not..." Loki tried again.

Sighing, Tony rose to his feet, shuffling to the closet to retrieve Loki's dressing gown from its hook. He reached up to drape the garment around Loki's shoulders. "Not that I don't like looking at your gorgeous naked self..."

Loki slid his arms into the sleeves and wrapped the robe tightly around his still-shivering body. That the hem touched just above his knees told him that he'd neglected to remove at least a foot of height from his inadvertent growth. 

At least Tony's words gave him some hope that his love wasn't entirely furious with him.

 _And why should he be?_ Loki thought, in a new, small burst of peevishness. He felt too tired for more, and anyway, he'd not the least desire to quarrel with Tony.

Also, he felt immensely hungry.

"Kurt made sandwiches before he headed off for class. He also let me know that you weren't exactly pleased that the two of us swept in to save the day at Strange's."

"I wasn't... displeased," Loki answered, in an attempt to be conciliatory.

"Be honest, Lok. You kinda were." Tony paused. "Wanna put some clothes on? Then we'll get you downstairs and fed."

Loki dressed in silence, pulling on shorts and socks and his worn old tracksuit, with a soft t-shirt beneath the jacket. His knees stung, irritated by even the soft fabric of his trousers. The skin of his scalp, arms and torso smarted too, from a thousand small wounds that no longer bled, but pained him nonetheless. His hands, especially, felt as if they'd been attacked by an entire hive of bees. He slumped down the stairs after Tony, neither of them speaking until his love had set the tray of sandwiches Kurt had prepared for them onto the nearer end of the dining table, pouring for Loki also a large glass of milk.

"It wasn't deliberate," Loki told him, his own words feeling flat and dull in his mouth. He found two plates in the cupboard, then took a pair of napkins from their drawer, setting two places at the table, one across from the other.

"I'm not mad." Tony poured himself a cup of coffee, adding the last dribble of milk from the carton to his cup. 

"You should make a new pot," Loki said. "The volatile oils have turned. Your coffee will taste bitter and unpleasant."

"Lots of things are bitter and unpleasant," Tony answered. "Eat your lunch, Lok."

Loki moved a half sandwich to his plate, staring down at it with blank indifference. His body clamored for food; his mind did not, for he felt too despondent to make even the small effort to bite, chew and swallow. Instead, he rose, moved to the living area and curled up on the sofa, his face pressed into the back cushions.

He heard Tony eating, but sensed no pleasure in the act--though Kurt's sandwiches invariably tasted delicious--only a sense that his love didn't know what else to do, didn't know how to proceed with the conversation that the two of them must have.

After a little while, exhausted and weighted with a dull, heavy sorrow, Loki slept.

* * *

Tony couldn't say he was exactly surprised when Thor showed up at the penthouse door. He knew it was the god of thunder because, even though Point Break could be surprisingly quiet for such a big guy, quiet enough that you wouldn't necessarily hear him approach, Thor tended to be weirdly shy about his entrances to the penthouse, and although he'd been given the code to the private elevator, he always, without fail, took the regular elevator and knocked on the door when he arrived on his own.

Thor's knocks also had nothing in common with his unexpectedly silent footsteps--in fact, they possessed a certain knell-of-doom quality, as if there wasn't a person outside the door, but the Grim Reaper, or some other being of supernatural menace.

"'I am not of this world,'" he intoned under his breath. Monty Python had a quote for everything, some even more appropriate than others.

Tony opened the door, not so much to Death, but to the latest iteration of the god of thunder--a giant surfer-dude dressed in board shorts and a tank top. Both garments showed off his ridiculously sculpted muscles admirably.

Thor gave him a large, friendly grin. He had a new haircut, Tony noticed, one of those short, spiky do's that look pretty much like permanent bedhead. On Thor, of course, it made him look even more handsome than his usual sky-high level of handsomeness.

"Your brother's napping," Tony told his visitor. He didn't have it in him to describe what had happened in the bathroom. Whatever the hell _had_ happened in the bathroom.

Magic gone wild!  That was pretty much his only guess.

"But it is for you, dear friend, that I have come here!" Thor answered. "For Steven has placed a new hound within the lesser of the rooms of added security, and desires our immediate attendance."

 _Say what?_ Tony thought, blinking in confusion.

"Ah, I have misspoken. Indeed it is not a hound our Captain has brought here, but..." Thor paused, brow furrowing. "A... puppy? Is that not what you say?"

"Another mysterious visitor. Got it."

Thor shot him a sideways look, a look that told Tony fairly clearly, _There's a lot more to this story, but I don't have the heart to go into it at this particular moment_.

Okay, then.

Thor started to head back toward the door, then, flushing slightly, he wheeled, joining Tony in the private lift instead.

"You know, bro, that you can use this elevator any time you like, right?"

Thor lifted one mighty shoulder, then let it drop.

After a few seconds (and several floors) passed by, he said, "My brother sleeps?"

"He's had kind of a day," Tony answered. He'd let his honey tell the rest of the story, especially since he didn't have the slightest clue about Loki's lavatory drama--and Loki had been so closed off after, like he was mad at Tony, maybe, for barging in (again), or he thought Tony was pissed at him, or...

Who the fuck knew? He _wasn't_ angry at Loki, and hoped Loki wasn't angry at him, but he kind of felt like his Care of Magical Creatures skills had been seriously on the fritz ever since that morning, and that, at this particular moment he lacked any clue as to how to fix them.

"I sensed..." Thor started, then clammed up, not uttering another word.

A few seconds more and the door slid open on Avengers Central, where the entire crew crowded in a tight little knot, all of them trying to peer through the small, virtually unbreakable window of Secure Room #2.

Bruce had the tricorder Tony had made for him, a gadget that wasn't a tricorder, really--though it performed quite a few of the same functions. Also, the clunky retro design, circa 1966, seemed to fit his ScienceBro's style.

Thor, as the tallest of the team--that is, when Bruce wasn't Hulked out--could easily peer over the others' heads. Nat, and Tony himself, were pretty much left guessing, stuck with a view of Thor's tank top and Steve's plaid shirt.

Thor took one quick look, then surprised them all by using what could only be a Prince Voice. Tony hadn't even known his future bro-in-law possessed such a voice, though he supposed that he did made perfect  sense.

"Open this portal!" Thor practically bellowed. "Open it at once!"

Nat and Director began to chime in, in unison, about why that might not be the bestest best of all ideas, but Thor, in full Prince of Asgard mode, didn't appear to care. He raised his right hand, the big, square-headed hammer flew down the hall and smacked into his fist.

Two seconds later the supposedly unbreakable door exploded into approximately five million pieces.

As they say.

Tony made use of his inferior size and natural sneakiness to barge ahead. The second he crossed the threshold, he saw that Steve's latest puppy was just a kid--an actual kid, maybe twelve or thirteen years old. He also realized that Thor had pulled said kid into his arms and held him close, crooning to him in what had to be whatever language they actually used in Asgard, when they weren't Allspeaking.

It sounded Scandinavian, but a lot more complex. It had Sounds. Lots and lots of complicated sounds.

 _Aes_ , it hit him. That language is called _Aes_.

The next thought to jump into his head was, _Damn, that kid looks like Loki._

Not like Loki 2.0, Tony's version, but the original model, the guy his honey invariably referred to as "White Loki." He possessed that same creamy skin, emerald eyes and Loki's rampant curls, though in the kid's case those curls shone, bright silvery-white instead of night-black. Up at the front, at the kid's hairline, rose one curl of pure, metallic gold.

He looked like a fucking baby angel.

Whatever Thor happened to be telling him, the boy didn't answer, just gazed up at the god of thunder  with those huge green eyes. His lips moved now and then in little spasms, as if the boy seriously wanted to speak, but that particular skill had been lost to him. 

He held his hands stiffly, even as his arms wrapped around Thor's broad chest, both clenched tight into fists. Not aggressive fists, but still fists.

Tony thought he'd never seen anyone look so glad to see another person as that kid was to see Thor.

"He must be released. And then fed," Thor piped up suddenly, surging to his feet in one powerful motion, the boy still cradled in his arms. The prince voice hadn't gone anywhere. "Apples, please, and..." He glanced down at the boy, his expression both tender and tragic. "And oatmeal. Yes, oatmeal. That will suffice."

"Thor," Steve said, in his best, level Captain America voice.

"You must relate to me the story of his finding." Thor's brow had furrowed, and it came to Tony that the Asgardian was seriously worried. Not about the kid, whoever he might be, more about the hows and whys of what had brought him here, to Midgard, to Manhattan, no less, when Thor had fully expected him to be safe (?) at home in Asgard.

He strode down the hall, kitchen bound, the boy's silvery head resting on his shoulder, the rest of them following like a flock of chicks clustering after their mother hen.

"Proper oatmeal," Thor added, "Not the sort of the packets." He settled the boy in the chair at the head of the table, taking the seat just around the corner, to the right. He snagged an apple from the bowl of fruit Steve always left there, produced a small knife and began to pare the apple into thin, neat slices, feeding them to the boy by hand.

Clearly, the kid was starving. Just as clearly, he possessed excellent table manners. Despite his obvious hunger, he nibbled each slice delicately, his head close to Thor's head, dark gold and silver side-by-side.

"Thor," Steve said again, delivering a large bowl of steaming oatmeal to the table. Steve had sprinkled raisins and cinnamon over the top. "I think we can all agree here, that we'd love to hear whatever you have to tell us."

Thor spooned up a small bite of the cereal, blowing lightly on its surface before offering it to the boy, who ate eagerly, spoonful by spoonful, until the bowl was empty. That accomplished, he rested his head on Thor's shoulder and fell asleep, just like that.

Point Break lifted him again, cradling the kid in his arms, and carried him to the sofa in the common area, settling on the couch and covering him tenderly with the throw. Asleep, the boy looked even more angelic, pewter-colored lashes lying long against his pale skin, all the anxiety smoothed from his face.

Silently, Thor withdrew, snagged two bottles of beer from the fridge and sank down in his original seat. He popped off the first cap with his thumb and drained the entire twelve ounces in three huge gulps. After, despite a superficial air of calmness, he really didn't look calm at all.

The rest of them took seats of their own, except for Clint, who made coffee.

Tony didn't really want coffee, but sipped his anyway. Holding the warm cup gave his hands something to do.

"I know not..." Thor began, not crying exactly, but with his eyes full of the wetness of rigorously held-back tears. "I know not what this portends."

"Who is he?" Nat asked quietly, laying her small hand on Thor's huge one, as the god of thunder sucked down his second beer--not quite as fast as he'd polished off the first, but fast enough.

Thor managed to blink back the incipient tears, but still looked somber. "I must thank you first, Steven, for seeing the boy to safe shelter, and to my care. I owe you a debt of great gratitude, for he would otherwise have wandered helpless and lost."

"Actually..." Steve cleared his throat in an uncomfortable kind of way. "I'm not sure he would--or could--have wandered much of anywhere. I mean, he could, walk, but not well. He kept falling."

Thor gave Cap one of his solemn, Prince of Asgardish looks. "Though it saddens me, that news is not unexpected, and again I must thank you, for he knows nothing of Midgard, or of life within a city. Indeed, he knows nothing whatsoever of life as we live it."

"My god!" Bruce burst out suddenly. "He's your... um... nephew."

Thor turned up the solemness a notch or two. "Indeed, he is--and how he has arrived here, at this time, and in this form strikes me as a profound mystery."

Slowly, Tony started to put two and two together, though with nothing like his usual speed and skill. "When you, uh, say nephew..."

Thor nodded gravely. "Yes. Loki is his... parent."

The others traded sneaky glances, like they'd all done the math, but no one wanted to stand up and give the answer.

Except, apparently, for Clint. "So he's here, but should be in Asgard and, oh yeah, he's also not an eight-legged horse."

Thor glared down at his own burly forearms, currently propped on the table.  "Jest not. It was... is... a great shame, and not..." He glanced up again, clearly having to steel himself to meet Tony's eyes. "Not in any way Loki's fault, for he only did what was commanded of him, and has suffered cruelly for an act meant to benefit all of our Realm. Our father claimed the child at once for his own, for Sleipnir, all knew from the first, was a being of swiftness and light, a being, like Loki, able to cross the Barriers Between, and Odin would make use of him."

"Which begs the question," Phil put in, "Did your father send him, and if so, what for?"

"That's my guy," Clint said. "Always one for the suspicious mind."

And, Tony couldn't help but think, _What, if anything, does this this have to do with Loki's ginormous freakout upstairs?_

The rest of the team went on discussing, as they _would_ do at pretty much any opportunity that presented itself. Tony left them to it, doubting that the others even noticed. 

He leaned on the back of the sofa, studying the sleeping boy, who hadn't moved so much as a centimeter since Thor first settled him there. He reached down, brushing Sleipnir's cheek with tip of one finger, not really surprised to find his skin as silken and poreless as Loki's own.

Kurt's "My Visit to Asgard" tale came back to him, the story of Loki with his mouth stitched shut, no one to free him, and out of all Asgard, only this boy--who hadn't been a boy at all--to give him comfort. Gods, poor Loki, and poor Sleipnir too. Someday, somewhere, if he had his way, the _Aesir_ would get their comeuppance.

Out of nowhere, Tony felt a vast sense of protectiveness flood through him. However he'd come here, whatever the circumstances, no one was going to hurt this kid. No one.

He hadn't heard Thor come up behind him, but all of a sudden, there the god was, his big arm (since the Asgardian possessed no sense of personal space whatsoever), brushing against Tony's far punier one.

"And saddest of all..." Thor began. This time, a single tear trailed down his cheek. He didn't wipe it away, maybe didn't even notice.

"What's that?" Tony asked.

"That they, parent and child, who loved one another so truly, have come to nothing now, for Sleipnir will not recognize Loki as he is, and Loki has forgotten his son as if he had never been."

Thor wasn't wrong, and Tony had to agree--try as he might, he couldn't think of anything more heartbreaking. 

 

 


	13. The Children of Loki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony isn't happy with himself. Thor is reassuring. Loki and Sleipnir reunite.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "stacking z's"=sleeping  
> Since at least 1918, comics have depicted the sound of a person sleeping (or snoring) as "zzzz" or "z-z-z-z." (some times a picture of a tiny saw cutting through a log is also shown, with the both the snore and saw making the same z-z-z-z sound. Out of this common image, both "stacking z's" and "sawing wood" became alternate ways of referring to the act of sleeping.
> 
> American punk band _The Ramones_ formed in Queens, New York in 1974. The four unrelated members (Joey, DeeDee, Johnny and Tommy) all adopted the last name "Ramone" and proceeded to tour together practically non-stop for the next 22 years, playing an impressive 2,263 shows, finally disbanding in 1996.
> 
> "Cargo shorts" are knee-length men's shorts with big, buttoned (or zippered) pockets on each leg.
> 
> Techically, a wingman (or wingmate) is a pilot who supports another pilot in a potentially dangerous flying environment--as in flying behind and outside the leader of a flying formation. In slang terms, a "wingman" is the buddy who backs you up in touchy or potentially embarrassing social situations.
> 
> Although the animated TV series _SpongeBob SquarePants_ didn't appear on the Nickelodeon Channel until 1999, many of the program's ideas originated in educational comic book called _The Intertidal Zone_ , written its creator, marine science educator and animator Stephen Hillenburg, ten years before the series debuted. SpongeBob, who lives in a pineapple under the sea in the underwater town of Bikini Bottom, is a sponge. Who wears pants. Square pants. His friend Patrick is a starfish. Does anyone else take pleasure in the thought of the team trying to explain this to Steve? 
> 
> Fish-shaped Goldfish crackers have been manufactured by Pepperidge Farms since 1962. 40% of them are made with the imprint of a smile, leading to the slogan "The Snack That Smiles Back! Goldfish!" The Flavor-Blasted! kind are extra cheesy.
> 
> Knotwork, in this instance, means a decorative pattern of interlocking or overlapping geometric shapes that look like braided strands or knots. Most of us are familiar, to some extent , with Celtic knotwork (also called Icovellavna), which tends to follow a strict, mathematical format, with one well-defined, continuous, solid line that curls in and around itself, but the Vikings also left a number of examples. These are looser in form, and are more likely to depict people, animals, and things. Although the two cultures heavily influenced each other, the Celts can claim to have developed the artform first, with designs that can be traced to Druidic times (the 4th century BCE, when the Druids were first referenced in writing, and before) or even as far back as the Neolithic (10,000-4,500 BCE).
> 
> The Odinforce is the powerful, mystical energy employed by the Kings of Asgard (especially Odin, hence its name). It needs to be replenished now and then (sometimes at inconvenient times, as we've seen) by entering the Odinsleep.

* * *

A black-clothed Loki edged into Avengers Central, his close-fitting outfit making him look shadowlike (albeit a tall, blue shadow) as he slipped along the wall. His expression--drained, frowny and completely devoid of his recently burgeoning sass--promised some sort of trouble ahead.

First the bathroom wreckage, and now...?

And oh, look at that, he'd brought the equally crowd-shy Bucky as his wingman. What was Tony supposed to make of that?

"Hey, babe!" he called out, trying for a neutral tone. Neutral, but also casual and welcoming. "I thought you were still stacking a few z's upstairs."

Loki gazed at him, clearly perplexed, if the furrows in his brow were any indication. After a few seconds, he clearly abandoned any attempt to decode this saying, and instead got right to his point.

"I have come to talk to you." He paused, the unhappy frown growing. "Why are you speaking to me in this false voice, beloved?"

Well, Loki did have a valid point. Tony opened his mouth, fully prepared to answer, but his honey raised a hand, nipping that in the bud.

"No, Tony. Respectfully, I must ask you to wait. _I_  need to talk. To all of you," Loki continued, kind of peeling himself off the wall to face the table. Back straight, shoulders squared, head high, as he visibly psyched himself to face the team, he looked so handsome, and at the same time so vulnerable, Tony could hardly stand it.

At the same time a little icy shiver went through his body, because something definitely was going on here--first the drama at Strange's, then the master en suite basically blowing up when Loki had (or so he said) just gone in to take a shower, now his honey shooting straight from doing his best impression of Peter Pan's shadow to full-on prince mode, even crashing what he knew full well was an official Avengers meeting.

Loki shot Bucky a glance, some kind of signal, Tony guessed, because the former Winter Soldier (who honestly looked a little strange in khaki cargo shorts and Loki's Ramones tee) peeled off to settle cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV. No one touched a button or a remote, but the set turned on anyway, the sound low, SpongeBob and Patrick capering across the screen.

"Is that...?" Steve's expression had gone 100% incredulous. "A sponge? Wearing... um... trousers?"

Clint audibly snickered.

"Don't worry about it, Steve," Natasha told him kindly. "We'll explain later."

Steve gave a little shudder, clearly having one of his "Twenty-first century... AARGH!" moments.

He shook it off, though, looking more like himself--his real, honest, overflowing-with-integrity self--than at any time since Loki's fake dad hijacked his free will. He even managed not to stare longingly at Bucky for an awkward, extended period.

"What can we help you with, Loki?" Steve asked kindly instead, smiling as he pulled the chair next to him back from the table and gestured for their visitor to sit, just as if he'd never scared Loki's socks off and sent him flitting halfway across the world to Berlin.

Loki sat, with that same perfect posture, clearly equal parts nervousness and determination.

Everyone stared at him, though not in a "what are you doing here?" way. Those were were definitely, "Well, _this_ should be interesting!" stares.

No one, he noticed, took time out to mention the elephant (or small former horse) in the room.

Thor came up behind his brother, first resting his hands on Loki's shoulders, then rubbing them gently. After a few seconds of this, he bent over to whisper--completely audibly, because Thor didn't actually possess an inside voice, "Fear not, little brother, for you are among friends."

At this point, the rest of them exchanged glances, all of which (Natasha's not included, because Nat never gave away a single thing that wasn't completely deliberate) clearly said, "Are you gonna tell him? _I'm_ not gonna tell him."

"Ah." Loki said, far too sharp to miss any of this. "I see you have something to relate to me, as well." 

Their faces now showed a range of emotions (Natasha's again excluded since she, true to form, showed nothing but polite interest), every one somewhere in the range between shifty and guilty.

"You first, Lok," Clint told him, interrupting this guiltfest. He left his own seat to cross into the kitchen, located a bag of goldfish crackers in the cupboard and winged them in Loki's direction.

Loki reached up a hand and caught them without even looking, reminding Tony of that one time, the time Clint--who he knew Loki now counted as one of his best friends in the tower, the friend who taught him piano, and had saved him from the evil ultrasound machine--shot an arrow at him and Loki caught it just like that--right before it blew up in his face.

"You shot me, Clint?" Loki asked, not looking angry, only interested. He paused to inspect the bag Clint had tossed him. "Oh, the little fish of cheese, flavor-blasted! My favorite!"

"It's like I know you," Clint said drily. "Seriously, Lok, what's up?"

"Some among you may be aware that, by Tony's request, I traveled today to the East Village, to visit a man by the name of Dr. Stephen Strange, who styles himself Sorcerer Supreme." Loki's "Mr. Yuk" expression flashed briefly across his face,

He took a deep breath, then forged ahead. "This Dr. Strange is not only a complete prat, but owns a terrifying and oddly-sized house--though he possesses also a lovely flying cloak, and his Mr. Wong was extremely kind to me." He paused again to munch reflectively on a small school of goldfish. "Dr. Strange required me to contort my body into the ridiculous position of lotus, the better, he claimed, to meditate, though what meditation has to do with the practice of magic, I could not say. He then attempted, with little success, to magically bind me, and in that state, I saw..."

He glanced sadly into the depleted Goldfish bag. "I saw, yet what it was I saw, I'm unable to tell you. Then again, in the bathroom once Kurt and Tony brought me home again, I experienced... I saw..." He glanced up sharply. "It all blew apart."

"I'm your witness," Tony said. "It totally did. Like, water and chunks of mirror everywhere, and Loki in the middle of it, looking like a drowned rat."

Loki's expression shifted from intense to completely offended. Thor looked offended too, on his behalf.

"It's an expression, Lok," Tony self-corrected. "You in no way resemble an actual rat."

"Go on, Loki," Steve said, fulfilling one of his main functions in the group, which was to keep them on-topic instead of letting each and every conversation shoot off in all directions.

"Thank you, Captain," Loki said.

"Just Steve is fine, Loki."

"Okay, Just Steve," Tony said, because he was not-being-a-smartass impaired.

"And... we're now twelve years old," Clint informed the room in general.

"I'm not," Nat put in.

"Excuse me," Loki interrupted, too polite to just tell them to shut up. He caught Tony's eyes, and the look of raw desperation on his face erased all desire for further banter.

"Go on, Loki," he told his honey quietly.

Loki pulled in a shaky breath. "I came to you today because I suspected that I must. Because I saw, amidst all that destruction and confusion, beings like those of legend."

Thor's big hands visibly tightened on his brother's shoulders, which must have hurt, but Loki didn't flinch or give any other sign. Maybe the pain of what he was trying to get out overwhelmed any physical discomfort.

"The legends..." Loki full-stopped, cleared his throat, then started up again, though his voice still came out husky with emotion. "Those 'The Children of Loki.' He paused again, and his voice dropped even lower. "'The _Monstrous_ Children of Loki.'"

By this time, the stares had morphed into a combination of incredulous and uncomfortable. Loki's long, slim hands balled into fists, fists he pressed hard against his own belly.

"I have no memory!" his voice rose again, hard and sharp, and he twisted in his seat to see Thor's face. "I have no memory, but would you not tell me, had I such children, borne by me, or engendered with my seed?  Monstrous children, and killers of worlds? Would you not tell me?"

_Uh.._. Tony thought. He wanted so badly to say something, anything, but what could he say? It hit him suddenly, just like someone punched him straight in the face (someone even stronger than Steve, who managed to kill heavy bags, the kind boxers use, at a rate of at least one a day--so, Hulk, maybe, for his imaginary puncher), that he'd been the worst kind of dick upstairs in the penthouse with Loki.

The Loki he'd taken in, lo, those many months before, had been broken: minus his memories, minus his powers, his healing abilities, even the shape he was used to walking around in. He'd honestly wanted that Loki to get better, to be strong, healthy and happy again--and that had happened.

Only now that it had, now that Loki had turned back into his real self, the self Tony suspected he would have been, with stronger support from his mom and less douchenozzlery from his dad (and Asgard in general). The self he would have if everyone had just told the truth from the start, letting him be his own blue, beautiful and magical person.

Magic, it hit him (again, and slightly less hard, so maybe this one was Steve after all) wasn't something Loki did. Loki _was_ magic, with possibly a few extra gaps left over for stuff like sass, loyalty, intelligence, courage, artistic talent, having one of the most warm and loving hearts he'd ever encountered, and looking amazingly stylin' in clothes that would have looked ridiculous on anyone else.

_So what the hell is my problem?_   Tony had to ask himself. _Jealousy? Being scared to let my little birdie spread his wings and fly? Being someone so emotionally constipated I don't even know **how** to be with a guy as passionate and real (which, okay, was a kind of funny way to talk about an ancient Norse god out of legend, but there you are) as Loki, and acted all sniffy and passive aggressive instead?_

Then it hit him for a third time: Loki, who he loved more, by at least the power of 10, than anyone he'd ever loved in his entire benighted life, had been in agony up there, an agony so far beyond words it had to find expression in broken pipes and shattered mirrors.

Now here Tony was, clueless as ever about the right thing to do. the same way he'd been clueless upstairs, letting this one fall completely on Thor.

Who Tony maybe owed a big apology, because, lately, Thor hadn't seemed clueless at all.

"Loki. Brother." Thor knelt beside the chair, wrapping up those tight fists in his own, much larger hands. "Brother--for you are my brother entirely, no matter what you have believed of yourself, and what you have been told. I swear to you, by all the gods, and by all the ancestors, mine and yours, that no child of yours could ever be described as such."

Loki sagged in his seat, his eyes rolling back in his head, but he held onto consciousness, clearly, by sheer power of will.

Even Bucky Barnes had turned around to look, his still slightly hazy blue eyes flitting from one person at the table to the next before locking on Loki. _No_ , his lips shaped. _No._

"The legends lie, my brother," Thor went on, gentle-voiced. "And yes, I know them, for my friend, Dr. Erik Selvig, showed me them in divers books, when I questioned how he might know of me, or, at the least, know of Asgard, and of my name. Though some small part of what was told is true..." He reached up, stroking back Loki's waterfall of black hair. "You were, ever, a trickster, my clever brother, and had also, ever, a silver tongue, able to weave tales out of the thinnest of air--but you were also, ever, 'More sinned against than sinning.' Which of the Midgardians wrote those words?"

"William Shakespeare, who is called 'The Bard,'" Loki rasped, adding, after a pause, " _King Lear_ , Act 3, scene two."

Tony wanted to laugh, in a heartbroken kind of way. His honey just couldn't help himself, even in dire circumstances, could he? 

"This I pledge to you, brother," Thor went on, "That three children alone have you borne, and that the eldest of them, Narfi and Vali, all enchantments aside, died gentle and young, having done no harm do any." Thor glanced toward the sofa--as per usual, with no poker face at all. "Again I say to you, Loki, that in the greater part, those stories are not our stories, though some hold grains of truth. Neither were their adventures our adventures, and by all sacred things, the creatures described therein were never your children.

"Then, in your memory, brother," Loki broke in, still sounding close to desperate, "One was never a great wyrm, or another a wolf, or yet a third woman half of death and half of the living?"

"No, no, none of those," Thor answered firmly.

"Then tell me..." Loki's head bowed lower, and Tony could hardly make out his next words. "Tell me, all of you, for you are wise. Why do I feel for them, in my heart, pangs of both love and sorrow? I have thought, being ignorant of my own life, and of what's real and what imagined... I had thought..."

"Ssh, ssh," Thor crooned, once again stroking back Loki's hair. In that moment, Tony glimpsed what things must have been like, a thousand years ago, when Thor had been young and Loki even younger, when nothing lay between them but love.

"Put such fears away, my brother," the god of thunder said, in the same kind voice, after a little time had passed. "Indeed, fear no dark or dire thing, for I will show you now something that is of you. Something that you have made, and made well, newly come into this world."

* * *

Thor led him toward the common area, with its large television and squashy sofas, and Loki, even not knowing what lay ahead, could scarcely breathe with anticipation.

Someone, most likely Tony, pushed a chair in close behind Loki's knees--a hard chair, one of the ones formerly drawn up to the table. He could not, for any reason, take his eyes from the face of the boy he found asleep there, upon the nearest of the couches, and so his hand fumbled to find its edge, to position himself for sitting, so that he would not miss, and fall instead.

He felt as if he could fall quite easily.

A sensation came over him as of being entranced, in a real and magical sense, by his first glimpse of the sleeping child, his senses opening and welcoming that which mere vision didn't recognize. In the midst of this rose thoughts of his friend Athena, and of the sculpture she'd made, which had been lovely, skillfully fashioned, and yet not right in any way.

Nothing in this boy seemed not right. He slept peacefully, even in this strange place, and even in sleep his face seemed full of light. 

The lines of that face echoed the lines of his own, although youth softened and rounded them, and the halo of silver-white curls, with the one golden lock in the front, made the boy seem younger still.

Nothing in that face spoke of hardness, unkindness, or ill-use, only of innocence.

Loki ran a fingertip down the curve of one soft cheek, sharp  _Jötunn_ teeth biting down hard on his lower lip as he tried to hold back a cry that somehow mingled joy and terrible sorrow.

He didn't need to look to Thor, or to confirm in any way what he'd easily known. No further questions needed to be asked, no further proof required. Such things seemed without consequence. Although it might feel trite to say, or even think, his heart knew the truth.

Yet, even now, that heart felt so wounded, his mind so confused, that he wept, and wept more, for events that could no longer even be said to belong to him, having left only the least of traces, like the merest whiff of smoke borne upon the wind, within the rags of his memories. It may have that he wept for the Loki of the stories, for the Sleipnir of the stories, for all they had endured, and all they had lost.

He sobbed until his head pounded, and he began to feel sick, and the voices he made out far in the background--their tone, that was, for Loki could distinguish no words--began to sound concerned.

He couldn't slow these tears, not by any force of will he possessed, only shake, and mop at his eyes with tissues, then with napkins as they were passed to him by unknown hands, then at last with his own sodden sleeves. The sickness in his belly became pain, nearly impossible to ignore. He felt deeply ashamed, and unpleasantly damp, and completely unable to stop.

_Ergi_ , said a bitter voice, somewhere deep inside his brain. _What a fell curse it is, to any man, to possess an_ ergi _son!_

Only then Loki no longer crouched, weeping, within a Midgardian room, beside a sofa that smelled, always, faintly of past pizzas and old popped corn. He'd slipped through the curtain of the concrete world, and into the territory of dreams.

There he walked, unsurprised, knowing what he could not know, beneath a series, one after another after another of high-curved arches, each arch, and its supporting pillars, deeply carved with intricate knotwork. Bright rays of the sun shone down from each of a hundred or more high windows, filling all the huge space with stripes of dark and light.

The air smelled warmly of hay and living beasts.

Loki knew then, with the secret knowledge of dreams, inaccessible in waking times, where he must be, and that one of the beasts there, however he might smell or look, or be, in every angle and curve of his body, could not, in truth, be called a beast in any way.

Loki blinked, his eyes (that in ordinary times saw keenly in all lights) alternately dazzled and shadowed. He knew he sought the last stall, always the last, wherever it moved to within that vast place. The only enclosure always warded, and magically guarded, and also far removed from all others. There, Loki knew, he'd find a powerful horse, male in its gender, a silver-white horse with eight golden hooves and a golden mane, shining between the light and the darkness.

He wended his way quickly through that maze of wooden walls, each high as the top of his head, unable to be deceived, or turned away from what he sought, the presence of magic alone enough to draw him on, until his goal lay just before him.

Loki's breath came out in a sigh of need and frustration. For years now he'd been held outside, prevented from being able to enter, or even to open the half-door, by knots of Craft, powered by the might of the Odinforce, that he lacked the power to untangle He pushed hard against this barrier, wishing ( _if only, if only_ ) that he could make his way past, just this one time, that he could rush inside and wrap his arms tightly around that strong white neck (mindful, ever, of his sharp horns), then gaze, all his love on proud display, into the wise, mild face of his son.

"Sleip!" he cried out from the depths of his heart. "Sleip, oh my Sleip!"

The great head tossed, mane rippling like wheat, and the horse turned, graceful despite his many legs. He moved toward Loki in a quiet music of hooves, close, then closer, until Loki could do exactly that thing he'd wished for most of all, which was to turn his face against that warm, soft neck, which ought to have smelled like horse--a warm animal odor mixed with dust, straw and leather--but didn't.

Loki pressed his face closer still, breathing, taking in an echo of his own scent, which was of snow, and fir trees, and lemons--all of which had to be perfectly correct for him to smell here, so near to his son, one more proof, if any at all might be needed, that he remained, always, Sleipnir's, and Sleipnir remained, for all time, his.

_Pabbi!_ a glad voice chimed inside his head then. _Oh, Pabbi, Oh, Pabbi, you are with me here!_

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	14. We Are Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony, Loki and Sleipnir spend a little time together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song " _We Are Family_ ," released in 1979, was written by Bernard Edwards and Nile Rogers and recorded by Sister Sledge, appearing on their album of the same name.
> 
>  _No te preocupes_ (Spanish)=Don't worry

* * *

"Guys, could we have a minute?" Tony asked. "Let's move all this to the penthouse, maybe, in a few? I'll have JARVIS let you know."

"Of course," Bruce answered. "Only, do you want me..."

"Totally appreciate the offer, but we'll be okay. See ya?"

Bruce nodded, though his concerned-face showed no sign of going away anytime soon.

"Really, Bruce," Tony said. " _No te preocupes_."

His ScienceBro left with the others, but showed every sign of dragging his feet as he went, without actually, physically, dragging his feet, a skill only Bruce seemed to possess.

Which left only Tony, his honey, and the problematic boy on the couch.

Sleipnir had sat up after his interrupted nap, though he still looked sleepy as hell. His hands lay relaxed in Loki's, smoothed out from their clenched-fist state by his father's (mother's?) gentle touches.

"I'm neither his father, nor his mother, but his _Pabbi_ ," Loki informed Tony. "If you like, you may say 'parent.'"

"Parent sounds good. Um... you remember him?" Tony asked, after thinking a long, long time about what might actually be acceptable to say under the circumstances. He'd fully prepared himself to welcome a new member of the family into their home, but at the same time the thought of Loki getting hurt by all this, and maybe hurt badly, scared him shitless.

"Does _he_ remember _you_?" he added.

"It's my brain that was damaged, beloved," Loki answered, "And not my heart. Besides which, I could hear him in an instant, in a way I hear no one else. He knew me also, exactly as I am."

"Well, babe, there goes one worry out the door. Color me relieved."

"He congratulates us, too," Loki continued, "On the conception of his small sister, for he has never, that he has known of, possessed brother or sister, and is quite excited to meet her."

The boy turned to Tony, studying him for a nearly uncomfortably long time, with a definitely uncomfortable intensity, before a wide smile broke across his face. Gods, he was a beautiful kid, literally inhumanly beautifully, especially with those curls, so pale they seemed to shine like starlight, and Loki's brilliant green eyes.

Loki smiled too, almost sadly, maybe considering all he'd lost. Maybe thinking, too, of all his son's losses.

Of every old tale told about Loki and his children, Tony thought maybe the ones about Sleipnir ran closest to the truth--and his heart kind of broke for all concerned.

"Sleipnir is asking, also, Tony, what he may call you--' _Frændi_ Anthony,' perhaps, or..." Here Loki's eyes sparkled, and the corners of his mouth quirked up. "Or perhaps, 'Well-respected Man of Iron.'"

Tony couldn't quite hold back a laugh. "Okay, that one's _way_ too much. ' _Frændi_?' What does that mean, Lok? 'Pabbi's devilishly charming and attractive fiance?'"

"You flatter yourself," Loki told him sternly, then ruined his severity by laughing too. "Consider, please, that I'm relying upon Thor for translation. I believe, however, that the English word closest in meaning would be 'kinsman,' for _Frændi_  may mean--again, as Thor interprets--uncle, cousin, or nephew."

"How about just 'Uncle Tony' for now, then, kiddo. Later..." He caught Loki's gaze, trying to let him know everything was okay, everything was fine. "We'll see, okay?"

Loki leaned forward, resting his forehead against the boy's for several minutes.

Tony, with every bit of self-control he possessed, fought the whole time not to fidget, or interrupt, or do any other obnoxious thing. 

Finally, Loki sat back on this heels, his hands still curled tenderly around his son's. "Sleipnir asks, 'Please, what is the meaning of "we'll see?" May he remain within this miraculous tower? May he be as he is now, or must he become, once more, a beast? May we..." Here Loki's voice broke a little, and his eyes shone with sorrow. "May we stay... May we stay together now, after so long a time?'"

"Oh, baby..." Tony couldn't help but think of earlier in the day, the way he'd been such a shit with Loki, probably coming across as worried more about what was going on with the fucking bathroom than with the man he loved. How could he have ignored all the confusion, sadness and worry pouring off Loki in waves?

"Sleip," he said, fighting down buckets of guilt and self-reproach. "I'm going to marry your _Pabbi_ , and when that happens, if you want to, you'll still be his son, but you'll become my son too. Of course you'll stay in the tower for as long as you want to and, just as equally of course, you two will be together. We'll all be together. Okay?" 

"Yes," Loki said softly. "Yes, my heart."

"Yes. Please. Uncle Tony." The words, as Sleipnir spoke them, weren't exactly what you'd call crystal clear. The boy came down hard on some consonants, and completely mush-mouthed others, but he'd talked. He'd actually talked.

And the first name Sleip ever spoke aloud had been Tony's.

"Anthony," J. said quietly in his ear-bee, "Agent Romanov says the team will meet again in the morning, if you're free. Right now, she commands--and these are her exact words--'Tony, just be with your family."

 


End file.
